If you are looking for a great resource for advent. I rec. the Naming of Jesus coloring set.
We have been using the illustrated ministry resources for a spiritual coloring class and they are amazing. Big with good quality paper they can be framed or otherwise used.
Guaranteed to arrive by advent if you order today, so i thought I’d quick throw this link up so you can look!
Theological update of the day. Hell is not a place God sends you as punishment. Hell is an exp (as opposed to a place). It’s the exp of the complete absence of love. If God is Love. Hell is the place without God or love. Sadly hell has been visited by many humans. Which is why it was so imp that Jesus exp hell/the absence of love. Otherwise it would be hard for God to walk with us when we are suffering. Love is the antidote to Hell.
Just FYI.
Oct. 11: Mugs and Hugs Free Playgroup, 9:00-10:00 a.m. (for our littlest friends) 10:00-12:00 for everyone else
Oct. 11: Giffy’s Chicken BBQ …
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You know, I have never seen the thriving church. I’m 33 and I have never seen the church the way it used to be.
But I have seen the church.
I have a deep seated theology about belief vs. faith.
Belief is individual, Faith is shared–hence community of faith.
Faith is the vast array of beliefs, doubts, worries and hopes that are held in community.
When a disciple asks to increase faith, the disciples says, “Increase our faith”
The disciples feel like they don’t have enough, enough hope or energy or whatever to get the job done.
And Jesus says, you–plural all of you–all you need is the faith of a mustard seed, and you can do all the moving you need to do.
Luke 17:5-10
5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”’
You know, I have never seen the thriving church. I’m 33 and I have never seen the church the way it used to be.
But I have seen the church. I’ve seen it in my small church which struggled to find a new pastor, which put in thousands of hrs to sit with and reconnect with the local community.
I have seen it in the four years we could count on, the 6 years we’ve had and the 2 more (at least) that are going to happen.
There Jesus is, in a group of people who don’t know if they have enough resources.
Jesus doesn’t say don’t worry….I love this about Jesus, Jesus never says don’t worry. Because God knows to worry is to be human. We are great at worrying, we are super champs at worrying, and its how we deal with
the unknown
the unsteady
the scary
Jesus doesn’t say don’t worry, he doesn’t dismiss the worry or tell us its stupid. Instead Jesus says “I have good news, the good news is that all the faith any and all of you need is the size of a mustard seed. I can work with that amount of faith”
The implications being this faith is enough to grow.
And when we have those moments of faith, the hymn or the prayer, the sermon snippet or the conversation in the parking lot. We are church.
I have seen the church–come see it with me….
Stars. Next time someone asked about the future of the church. I’m going to invite them to count the stars in the sky and remind them God is as big as the universe, Gods promise is as plentiful as the stars and that our grasp of such things is as difficult as counting the stars is….book rec is Madeline Lengles Wind in the Door for more info
In my life, I am too busy…
I have always been a Martha, I don’t even want to be Mary.
But in the midst of the children screaming, the messiness of the house and the juggling of the schedules, God is there.
In my life, I am too busy…
I have always been a Martha, I don’t even want to be Mary.
But in the midst of the children screaming, the messiness of the house and the juggling of the schedules, God is there.
Just like Goodnight Moon, where each and every object is remembered and names, God keeps track of us, and loves us.
God is there in the mounds of paperwork, the long to do list and the phone that is ringing–in every worry that is a part of the church.
I know God is in these things, in the sunny walks to buy milk, where everything goes smoothly, in the car rides where everyone is yelling at each other for no reason. God is there.
But although God is there, the time I get to spend with God, is often not at worship where I’m trying to remember everyone in my prayers, or at home where we say our Amens or at the office where its a game of finish the most things. The moment I get to to spend with God is in the coffee shop–at the Barnes and Noble or the Starbucks, its when I go grocery shopping late at night, its when I get time to exercise.
And so I treasure the time I get to spend with God, taking comfort that God is always spending time with me.
Prayers are so much more than a comforting platitude
Context:
At the beginning of the week, and saw that the passage was about prayer. Thank God, because no matter what happens this week, I know that it will apply.
Then the African-American caretaker of an autistic man was shot……
I am the mother of an autistic child. Right now he is small and cute. When he flaps his hands giving “exclamatory hands” to excitement or frustration, its not very threatening, and if he does throw a tantrum he is still small enough that I can pick him up in a worse-case-scenario.
As the mother of an autistic child I can say, I don’t care who this police officer was aiming for, this was a terrible action.
So what am I supposed to do, pray?
What can others do for me and my son, pray for us?
Sermon:
Prayer is often used as a comforting action–but that is not its only purpose.
When you pray for someone, you are placing them in God’s hands. You are enacting love. You are opening yourself to be in relationship with them.
Whenever there is a harsh disagreement in the church congregation, session (board of leaders) or the Presbytery (our higher governing board). I will be the first to raise my hand and call for prayer.
And I’ll tell you what it is difficult to immediately stop and pray, the temptation is to continue arguing, the temptation is to prove that I am right, and that you should be listening to me!
This is exactly when prayer is needed, though, because you are trying to focus on God, to change your own individual perspective. Prayer is an act of Holy Imagination, where the world is viewed as the beginning of what God wants for us. God’s priorities and love are given voice and precedent over our own perspective. True prayer, opens oneself to actively love others, and that love is changing. That action is one in which we practice persistence to build a practice and discipline of prayer.
Time after time the most effective antidote to bigotry and prejudice is not education or knowledge. Its not about who is on the “right side of history.” Its having a relationship with someone who is different than you. Its knowing and loving a queer person or a person of color or one who is trans, female in leadership, or living in poverty.
Love is dangerous, because love changes your perspective.
Praying for someone is looking at them and loving them. Praying for another person an act of loving God, one where you recognize the other person as a child of God.
Just as Jesus looked at Martha, and then loved her, and then spoke to her last week.
So too are we called to love each other. Prayer is a discipline by which you practice seeing the world as God wants it to be, so we are more equipped and enabled to bring that world into being. Praying for one another is loving them through all the joys and hardships and struggling to find community with them, especially when we disagree.
Prayers are so much more than a comforting platitude, prayer is one of many disciplines by which we are able to get things done.
#realclergybio
when you turn 33 and prepare for a year of nerdy thoughts about being the same age as #Jesus in the height of his ministry
😛
I condemn senseless killing. All of it….I will stand behind every humans right to live, breathe, laugh and love no matter who they are.
when of our baptismal questions is do you denounce/reject Evil?
i always joke this is the easy one, who isn’t against evil? But as the news of violence and hatred pile up. I wonder why it’s so hard to act against evil?
Min the Belhar Confession there is a rejection piece that condemns wrongdoing–and I find myself, over and over again, condemning the bad things that have happened.
So here’s me practicing my rejection and denounciation of evil!
I condemn senseless murder. All of it. I condemn that African-Americans are unduly targeted, I condemn that trans women of color are the most murdered and abused of our population, I condemn the ways our Latinx, Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Native Americans (as well as countless other minorities) are silenced and erased, I condemn that people are killing police officers, I condemn small children being run over on holiday in Nice, I condemn people dying who were dancing, I condemn the violence against those who use the bathrooms who don’t look gender conforming, I condemn all efforts to divide by calling some groups racists and others anti-police. In the name of The Belhar confession I condemn any threat to unity and recognize that separation is a sin Christ has already defeated. I will continue to work towards unity and reject the sins that are prejudice, separation and bigotry.
I am done with it. No more!
I will stand behind every humans right to live, breathe, laugh and love no matter who they are. I will resist the temptation to compare and separate and will work to treat all humans like the creations of God they are!
Phew! Back the the work of living it out!
Pokemon Go is not new technology, its based upon Ingress which uses google maps landmarks to create a fun reality that layers on top of the landscape of life. In fact, the idea is not that different from Geo-caching which has been around for a LONG time.
What PokemonGo has done is hit all the right notes at the right time.
-Classic Fandom that has been around for 20years
-A pre-written motif to “Collect” & “Catch” them all
-The fact that it is the Age of the Geek, most adults who complain about the overuse of technology unashamedly own smartphones and use facebook….
-A year that has been…rough….2016
Let’s be clear, millennials and young people have grown up in an age where getting to know your neighbors is a rarity.
Its not because we (because I’m a millennial) are addicted to technology and antisocial–its because we are a displaced generation, overworked and farther away from home than any of our parents were…this means that technology has been USEFUL for us….
Its not all sunshine and rainbows but through facebook my parents and in-laws see pics of their grandchildren (after all what else is fb for?), through cell phones I can call my best friends in Seattle, NYC and Alabama without crazy charges pretty much whenever I want, through meetups I hold a weekly playgroup that has touched at least 300bfamilies, through twitter I can virtually attend many conferences and conversations about racism, community, church and technology, and through etsy I can find items that have my autistic son’s favorite character, through instagram I can take pics of what I am reading and hopefully find people with like interests…..
Technology makes manifest our longing to connect, giving us opportunities to find new ways to reach out. It was only a matter of time before technology would turn things on their head and actually succeed in bringing people physically together.
It brings people together in communal spaces, inviting them to talk and interact…and what is amazing is they do!
It would be easy to pooh-pooh the effects of a fad…but why not celebrate? Is this not what we hope the ultimate goal of technology to be? Isn’t it wonderful when people get together? (and yes, people are imperfectly using the technology, a handful of people have taken advantage of it and people need to remember to be SAFE on their cellphones–but you should see the hundreds of churches seeing positive effects of one game)
When things are tough, and community is hard to find, I see PokemonGo as the opposite of escapist, its creative. Its creating community in what has otherwise been a fairly lonely year of tragedy. As communities of queer,Latinx, African-Americans, police officers are effected, as Baghdad, the Middle East and France are attacked, as time is hard, PokemonGo is just what the Dr ordered.
So GO! Don’t capitalize or dismiss the game.
Enjoy it, live into whatever interactions it creates (whether you play or not)
and be excited for what it might mean for the future, because that future won’t come unless we dare to dream it.
katyandtheword 