Disciples Are……?

Each June members of the Worship Committee (who provide guidance for Central’s traditional worship service) and the Celebration Worship Leaders (who provide leadership for Central’s contemporary worship service) and related staff gather for a worship planning retreat. The purpose of this retreat is to come up with ideas for the different sermon series that Jeff Cover and I preach throughout the year. This Saturday, June 27, is the retreat date.

For the 2008-2009 program year, individual sermon series were connected to the overall theme “Called To…”; what and who are God’s people called to do and be?

For the 2009-2010 program year, the overall theme is:

Disciples Are…

For the past year we have explored what it means to be called by God…a natural move is to now explore in great depth the outcome or result of God’s call, which is Discipleship. The call we answer is to a specific form of Discipleship…as we are Disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ charge from God is to transform the world, to actualize God’s Kingdom (though the word ‘Kindom’ is perhaps a more understandable metaphor for Gospel-hearers in 21st Century America), and thus our Discipleship is not an inwardly focused, individualized activity…but is focused on others…we are Disciples on behalf of the world!

Possible Thematic Ideas:

• Disciples Are…World Changers (disciples exist for the good of the world)
• Disciples Are…Servants (a Lenten series based on the ‘Servant Song’
  texts in Isaiah 40-55)
• Disciples Are…On The Go (stories of being sent by God)
• Disciples Are…Perplexed But Never Without Hope
• Disciples Are…Agents of Grace

As those who lead worship at Central head into the planning retreat on Saturday, we would appreciate your welcome your ideas. What do you want to know about Disciples and Discipleship? What sermon series ideas pop into your head when you hear this theme? Leave a response on the blog, or send me an email and know how grateful we are for your thoughts.

Worship is our heart as a congregation. Worship is what makes us unique from any other organization or club. Worship is where we come to give thanks to and connect with God, and are energized and sent out in service. Worship is a God-given gift!

I’ll see you in worship this Sunday!!

Voicing Our Faith

This past Monday evening Central’s Session examined the incoming Deacons, Elders and Trustees and approved them as ‘ready to be ordained’. The Book of Order requires this examination as the next-to-last step in the New Officer process.

It all started last fall when the Nominating Committee began to meet and consider and pray about those whom God might be calling into leadership at Central. Sixteen people responded to the call of God and the call of the Nominating Committee — 6 Deacons-to-be, 5 Elders-to-be and 5 Trustees-to-be (normally there are only four, but we were one short!). At the Annual Meeting of the congregation in early March, these 16 people were elected to the respective offices. In the months since then they participated in a seven-week training program, have now been examined, and will be ordained and installed during our worship services on Sunday, June 28. Becoming and being a Presbyterian leader takes some work!

Most of Session’s examination of the officers-to-be is in the form of a small-group conversation. But when all the conversation is ended, each incoming officer shares her/his own personal statment of faith. The sharing of these statements is one of my favorite church moments of the entire year!

Each person is asked to offer a brief, present-day snapshot of his/her faith; reflecting on questions like: Where is God at work in your life? Who is Jesus Christ for you? What does the church mean to you? How do you experience the Holy Spirit? The incoming officers pray about these statements, and agonize over them, and pour their hearts into them. And what they produce is simply amazing!!

Most of the statements are offered with some degree of emotion, as the officers-to-be reflect on the joyous and painful and sacred moments of life that have shaped the faith they express. Those of us who are privileged to hear these statements, usually do so with moist eyes…and find that our eyes get moistened again and again and again. It is a holy time.

I think that stating what we believe, voicing our faith, from time to time is a good thing, and want to encourage us all to do this. For just like my body and my mind, my faith is forever changing and growing. What I understood about God a few years ago has been challenged and stretched by the Holy Spirit. My experience of love and community here at Central has changed how I talk about the church. My attempt to be a disciple of Jesus has been transformed as I witness others following him with greater passion and clarity of purpose. Voicing our faith gives us the opportunity to recognize how and where our faith has evolved, and gives us the words to express what our faith in Jesus means to us.

If we never give voice to our faith, pretty soon all we can tell someone else about what we believe is “it’s personal”! And, my friends, that’s not enough. Jesus doesn’t expect us to beat people up with our faith…but I believe he does expect us to be able to describe what God has done and is doing in our life, and be able to share the abundance of God’s love with others.

A personal statment of faith doesn’t have to be long. It may be prefaced with a story, but a good paragraph can capture one’s faith very well. Start with: “I believe that…….” I hope you’ll share your statement of faith with me, and perhaps even with all of us by commenting through the blog.

Now, please remember that this Sunday, June 21, we are worshipping on 7th Street, in a single service at 10:00 a.m. The service will be a blend of our Traditional and Celebration Worship, and this year will include communion. Bring lawn chairs, wear hats and sunglasses, be generous with the sunscreen, wear comfortable shoes and appropriate clothing for being outside on a warm summer day. Following worship the Fellowship Committee will be serving barbeque, and we are all to bring a side dish or dessert to share. It should be a grand morning.

I can’t think of a better day for sharing Central with a friend or neighbor or co-worker. Who will you invite? Go call them right now!!

See you on 7th Street for worship this Sunday!

A Window But Never A Box

One of the books I read last week while I was away on Study Leave is A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren. McLaren is one of the great thinkers about the American Christian Church in the 21st Century, and boldly prophetic about where he imagines the Church to be heading in the coming years. He very intentionally avoids abstract language and describes overly-difficult theological concepts in understandable ways. I encourage you to add this book to your summer reading list!

McLaren quotes C.S. Lewis (author of many works, including the Chronicles of Narnia) on the issue of the language we use to describe God. “Language,” says Lewis, “can be a window through which one glimpses God, but never a box in which God can be contained.”

This quote struck me, because I find that our language when it comes to talking about God is so often limited; and because the language we use for God is so important. The metaphor for God that is found most in scripture, and that we use most frequently to describe God is “Father”. It is a powerful and useful metaphor, but it is also limited. If we understand and speak about God in exclusively male imagery, we ignore the other wonderful metaphors for God found throughout scripture – friend, shepherd, vinedress, wind, storm, mother, fire, water, rock. If God can only be “Father”, think how damaging this metaphor is to the faithfulness of those who have been mistreated by their human father. If we only embrace the metaphor of “Father” for God, we fail to recognize that women are also created in God’s image.

Each of the many scriptural metaphors for God can enlighten us as we seek to be faithful…but if the metaphor is taken too far, or taken in the wrong way, it can mislead people about God…or even worse, lead people away from God! I think C.S. Lewis has it right. Our language about God must always serve as a window, a window through which we can peer into the heart of God and know how we are to live.

Do we have God in a language box? If so, we need to let God out…for in truth, all our metaphors for God have never fully captured God any way, and they never will!

See you in worship this Sunday!

How Many Times, O Lord?!!

This past Monday I attended a workshop in Indianapolis sponsored by The Center For Congregations, which is a wonderful gift to the churches of Indiana supported by the Lilly Endowment. The workshop was entitled “Creating Congregational Cultures of Generosity”, and, as the title suggests, was about religious giving and financing a church’s ministry and mission in the 21st Century.

“Transparency” was one of the many topics discussed. I thought transparency has to do with things like how easy it is to read and understand the financial records of the church, the openness of the budget process, and providing regular and clear information about the church’s financial health, etc.

Transparency in finances is about all these things, but I also learned that it is about much, much more!

Transparency for a church begins with everyone in the congregation being able to answer two questions — Who are we? and, What are we about?

“Who are we?” is an identity question. Why does our church exist? What makes our church unique and sets us apart? Our answers to these questions reveal the core values that shape the internal life and structure of our church.

“What are we about?” is a question about mission. What is the mission, the purpose or purposes, of our church that makes us accountable to God, to the world around us, and to each other? What is the compelling vision for service as disciples of Jesus Christ that excites us, and makes us want to be the most faithful church and people we can be? Having a core mission helps us become, and remain, a spiritually and structurally healthy congregation.

For the past few months the Vision & Planning Team of Session has been peppering us with surveys. There have been four of them so far, about 1) Congregational Communication, 2) Connections & Involvement, 3) Spiritual Growth & Christian Education, and 4) Leadership & Leadership Development. Each of these questionnaires has been designed to gather information from you the members and friends of Central, that Session can use to figure out how Central can best follow God’s call into the future. Session wants to be in partnership with you as it works on answering the important questions of “Who Central is” and “What Central is about”. Transparency is the goal.

It seems clear to me that we are experiencing a case of survey fatigue. The first two Vision & Planning surveys have been filled out by approximately 90 people so far. The third survey has 45 responses. The fourth survey has 39 responses. Session really needs your help in raising the response rate for these last two surveys. There are several ways to access them online. You could use the Vision & Planning link on the righthand side of the Central Website, you could click the Vision & Planning tab at the top of this blog (or on the link on the righthand side), or you can just simply click here. A page will appear with links to each of the surveys, and a few minutes of your time today will make a huge difference in Central’s future ministry and mission.

Transparency has always been important to the church of Jesus Christ, and in the 21st Century it has become essential. I look forward to our growing more and more transparent together for God’s Kingdom.

See you in worship Sunday!

Are We Having A Rummage Sale?

The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle is one of the books I’m currently reading, and it is fascinating!

Tickle opens the book with the premise that roughly every 500 years the Christian Church goes through a great rummage sale of sorts, where “the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may be at that time, become an intolerable carapace (a hardened shell) that must be shattered in order that renewal and new growth may occur.” (p. 16) She traces the history of these church-wide rummage sales this way:

16th Century — The Reformation led by Martin Luther and John Calvin

11th Century — The Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholocism

6th Century — Pope Gregory the Great who helped formalize the monastic movement, where Western Christianity was held in trust during the dark ages.

1st Century — The birth of the Church and its movement out of Judiasm into the wider world.

Tickle believes that here in 21st Century North America the Church is already in the midst of the next great rummage sale; metaphorically cleaning out the attic, and the basement, and all those closets that no one ever opens any more, of all the things that are keeping the Church from being the kind of place it needs to be to tell people the Good News of Jesus Christ in this day and age.

When these every 500 years Church rummage sales happen, Tickle says there are always three consistent results: “First, a new, more vital form of Christianity does indeed emerge. Second, the organized expression of Christianity which up until then had been the dominant one is reconstituted into a more pure and less ossified expression of its former self. Third, every time the incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the faith has spread — and been spread — dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity’s reach as a result of its time of unease and distress.”

I am fascinated by Tickle’s premise and argument, and think she may be on to something. In my experience, churches collect so much physical and emotional rummage over time, that a periodic sale and time of letting go would be healthy and make for a lot less clutter!

I am heartened by two other points in the book. First, Tickle doesn’t beat up on the present day Church and Church members for allowing the Church to reach the point where a rummage sale is necessary. She sees the Church’s periodic need to let go and transform and re-emerge as a natural movement, very much like the movement we know in Jesus, from life to death to resurrection and new life! Second, Tickle believes that when the rummage sale is over, the existing Church will emerge stronger and healthier and even more faithful. We are people who live in hope that God is never done with us, that God is always at work within us and our Church. What a gift this hope is!

So, what do you think? Is it time for a rummage sale? Who is going to price everything?!

See you in worship this Sunday!!