Among the defining ministry moments at Vine Street over the past year one stands out: forty-eight of us – children as young as six and adults as old as eighty-two, male and female, individuals and families of five – went to New Orleans for a week after Christmas. We went there to help rebuild a church and to build a parsonage; we went there to see for ourselves the damage caused by broken levees in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina; we went there to help rebuild with our own hands a broken community.

For an entire week, we lived together in a bunkhouse still under construction; we tore things down and cleaned up; we installed shower walls and framed out a sanctuary with steel studs; we shared all our meals in the big kitchen/living room that had just been tiled; we looked for God together, and every night we shared where we had seen God; we prayed, we cried, we were speechless at the amount of destruction in the lower wards; we worshiped with members of West Side Christian Church and their pastor, Brother Vance.

Our work trip to New Orleans after Christmas was an amazing experience, and we have already scheduled a follow-up trip for this winter. On December 30, almost fifty of us will again travel to the gulf coast to help rebuild a broken community – and to return with our own hearts profoundly transformed.

When we say “Community Ministry” we think about our work in the community, we think about going out through these doors and serving Christ in the people we encounter. We also think about Room In The Inn, a ministry of hospitality to men who have no place to sleep safely for the night during the winter months; they come through these doors and find friendly hosts, a good, hot meal, and a warm and safe place to spend the night.

When we say “Community Ministry” we also think about the community grants we give to several local organizations, including Campus for Human Development, Hope Camp, Disciples Village, Interfaith Dental Clinic, and many others (read a detailed report here).

We engage in various forms of community ministry and we are discovering that it is much more than we thought: not only do we offer support and help to others in the community, or help rebuild communities that are hurting; we ourselves as a community of faith are shaped profoundly by those mission experiences. And the greatest gift is this: as we reach out to others, our roles as givers and receivers soon begin to dissolve as God makes of us all one community. Perhaps that’s why we call it “Community Ministry” in the first place.

Through These Doors

We are God’s church. We are not our own, but a people called to new identity and fresh purpose in Christ. We are a people being saved by being drawn into Christ’s saving work.

Jesus says, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:9-10).

Every year we set aside a few weeks in the fall to give prayerful and focused attention to one dimension of our discipleship: being stewards. A steward is someone entrusted with taking care of someone else’s property. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are not property owners but stewards of life – air, water, and land; animals and plants; the time, the neighbors, the resources given to us. Every year we set aside a few weeks to ask ourselves, Are we good stewards of life? Are we faithful stewards of the gifts entrusted to us? Does our way of life reflect that we have entered into new life through baptism into Christ?

We enter the church through the Gate, and we become part of a community that reaches back in time across many generations and that brings together people from every tribe and nation on the face of the earth. Whenever we say Church, we say GlobaLocal Church. Last Sunday we celebrated World Communion Sunday; theday serves as a reminder that the table around which we gather is larger than any of our tables: this table is big enough for all. This table extends beyond the doors of any sanctuary.

Doors are powerful symbols because they are openings. They are openings where access can be granted or denied. We go through doors to enter the world and to return home. We find ourselves standing in front of closed doors. We sit by doors longing for somebody to knock or we hold a door open waiting for somebody to cross the threshold.

Keeping in mind that Jesus Christ is the Gate to abundant life for the whole world, what doors do you need to unlock? What doors do you want to walk through more often? What doors will you have to close for good?

Terror in Congo

I remember reading Bryan Mealer's article, "Congo's Daily Blood: Ruminations from a Failed State" in the April edition of Harper's Magazine last year (I would have loved to add a link to the article, but they are a little over-protective of their stuff). It was, and remains to this day, one of the most disturbing pieces of journalism I have ever read. At the time, I participated in an effort to increase awareness in Nashville about Darfur, and I was grateful for every celebrity who wore a button or a T-shirt, "Save Darfur." These days, it seems, the only way to get and keep the public's attention is by getting the ear of Oprah or George Clooney.

Eve Ensler isn't exactly a celebrity of that caliber; her fame is largely based on the occasional controversy around her play, "The Vagina Monologues." She is not a frequent guest on late night shows or at red carpet events, but she can write. She wrote a piece in Glamour magazine about the hellish violence against girls and women in eastern Congo. And Glamour apparently makes enough money from advertising to allow non-subscribers to read it online.

I find it almost impossible to speak from the pulpit about the violence the people of Congo - and especially the women and children - have been suffering for years. I cannot imagine writing about it in any necessary detail in the church newsletter because some of our young children might read it. But I want to encourage you to let what is happening in Congo shape your prayers and other actions.

Reading Teresa

There was a time when mention of Mother Teresa made me think of the famous cinnamon bun at Bongo Java. I knew about her work in Calcutta, but I wasn't particularly interested in her as a person. Every now and then snippets of her spiritual insight came across my desk, two-liners with her name attached to them; but, like I said, I wasn't too interested in her as a person.

A couple of days ago, during a prayer service, a friend mentioned that apparently for decades Teresa had known Christ only as 'the Absent One', that she had prayed and worked without a sense of God's presence. We talked briefly about what we mean when we say 'God' or what kinds of knowledge or certainty go with 'knowing God,' and we talked about prayer and silence.

I read the article in TIME magazine, and I didn't quite know what to make of it. She had shared her struggle with spiritual advisers, in conversations I would consider confidential. At least once she even asked that all her letters or anything she had ever written be destroyed, but as a prospective saint (or perhaps even as a nun under the vow of obedience) she could not claim rights of privacy most of us take for granted.

I am deeply moved by the way she integrated the profound and painful absence of God into her faith by embracing it as part of her sharing in the suffering of Jesus on the cross (Mark 15:34 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). At the same time, I find it appalling how a bunch of men - from Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk who edited and published her letters and writings, to several other priests who had spoken with her over the years, and all the way to Christopher Hitchens - read and interpret Teresa to turn her either into a saint of the church or, for lack of a better term, atheism's poster child. What appalls me is the violence of such interpretive work that turns a human life into a symbol; perhaps it is unavoidable for individuals who lead such public lives.

I'm not ready to add my voice to that choir of male explainers.

Perhaps I will read the book.

I find myself wondering how much my prayer life depends on a sense of God’s presence, on feeling that the Lord is near. I can’t say it does; the knowledge of God involves my thinking as well as my emotional faculties, my remembering and hoping, my serving and giving, but it doens’t depend on any one of them. For me, knowing God is rooted in trusting, and trusting integrates all the other ways of being in the world and relating to others.

Small World

The world is getting smaller at a stunning rate. Many individuals and entire cultures are overwhelmed by the demands of rapid change. One of many questions this raises for me is, "How can we be church in a world in flux?"
I have followed that question in various ways through conversations, prayer, and reading, and again and again I have arrived at one point: We must learn to read Scripture together. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But it isn't easy. Our culture, our family history, and personal experience determine a specific location from which we look at Scripture and try to understand its meaning. When our ways of reading Scripture differ too much, we tend to look for new partners to read it with. We all know the result: a plethora of churches, denominations, sects, and non-denominational groups. Much of the ecumenical movement is the humble attempt of Christians to learn to read Scripture together, i. e. learning to listen to the perspective of others. Interfaith dialogues between Christians and Jews, or Muslims, also consist to a large degree of learning to read one another's Scripture together and discovering how particular texts shape particular ways of being in the world. Most of these dialogues unfortunately happen far removed from congregations (this is however a direction in which we could move the venerable Nashville tradition of the Brotherhood/Sisterhood Interfaith Dinner, begun over sixty years ago by the Temple and Vine Street Christian Church).
For many months I have thought and on occasion talked about another possibility of learning to be church in a world in flux: what if we had a partner congregation in another part of the world and learned to read Scripture with them? What if we built relationships with a church, say, in El Salvador or Mexico? What if we did that without thinking first about their needs and our desire to help, but rather about our common need to better understand the world we live in, the world we are called to be the church in? Obviously, I like the thought, or I wouldn't have entertained it for so long (and I wouldn't be writing about it). Do you think this is a proposal worth pursuing?
In July, during the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Fort Worth, Texas, I met with Felix Ortiz, the Executive for Latin America and the Caribean with the Division of Overseas Ministries. I told him about the dream, and he was, well, cautiously encouraging. He liked the idea, but he wanted to make sure I understood that there was some homework we would have to do before meeting our new partners somewhere south of the border:

• Our church has partner churches all over Central and South America, all the way from Mexico to Chile and Argentina. In some countries they are Disciples, in others Lutherans, Pentecostals, or Congregationalists. We would have to choose a country.
• A few U.S. congregations have entered into partnerships with churches in those countries and have been transformed through various encounters over time. It would be good if we could get in touch with them and hear about their experiences.
• Relationships evolve in unpredictable ways, but we should only enter them with some awareness of our expectations, both of our potential partners and of ourselves.

Like I said, Felix wanted to make sure I know there's homework involved. I came away from the conversation with a much better view of the road that might actually lead to such a partnership.
Is this something you would like to explore? I'm thinking of a small group of people with a passion for overseas ministries, contacting other churches who have done this before and interviewing them about their experience, gathering all the wisdom from those encounters, giving some thought to what promise we see in such a partnership, and preparing a proposal to the congregation. The world is getting smaller, and this is a chance to meet some of our neighbors. If you would like to give some time and energy to this project, please send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you.

Pearls in a Pod

I've owned a portable mp3 player for several years, but a few weeks ago I gave in and bought an iPod. I have to admit that I love the design (and the weight: my 'other player' weighs a ton in comparison!), but what really convinced me was the convenient access to hundred of podcasts through the iTune store. And since the store was created to promote the sale of Apple hardware, I did exactly what Steve Jobs's marketing people expected of me.
One of my favorite programs is Krista Tippett's Speaking of Faith The program airs on Nashville's WPLN 1430AM at 7:00 am on Sunday mornings - not the best time, unless you are an early riser with nothing better to do - but the podcast gives me the freedom to download the podcast and listen to it whenever it suits me (I can also repeat entire shows or listen again to the most fascinating portions of a program). By the way, you don't have to own an iPod to listen to podcasts: the files are in mp3 format and will play on just about any media player.
Another podcast I have subscribed to is a daily prayer from pray-as-you-go, produced by Jesuit Media Initiatives of London, England. Each program is about 10-12 minutes of music, a passage of Scripture, and simple questions for meditation and prayer. I listen to them mostly in the car, and they have given me beautiful moments of calm and focus in rush-hour traffic or on my way home after a very long day. They also manage to include all the lovely accents of the British Isles!

Floods, Drought, and Generous Hearts

Tennessee and the South-east of the United States are suffering under extreme drought conditions while the Midwest as well as Oklahoma and Texas are recovering from severe floods. In Tennessee, twelve people have died from heat-related causes, farmers have lost crops, and lawn care companies have gone out of business.
You have read the stories in the paper, you have seen the pictures on the news, and you have remembered all who suffer in your prayers – men and women, young and old, all God’s creatures, large and small.
In July, Week of Compassion responded to an emergency appeal exactly 31 times – once a day. Normally, it’s about once every two days. Several of these were major appeals, e.g. Midwest floods, Iraqi refugee crisis, Darfur, and then came the urgent requests for help from India and other parts of Asia after widespread floods, from Peru after the earthquake, and from the many places hit by hurricane Dean and tropical storm Erin.
Week of Compassion has responded to every single appeal for help, as they always do to every request from a partner. Regular giving to Week of Compassion has been down by approximately $75,000, partly due to seasonal giving patterns, and Johnny Wray, Director of Week of Compassion, is concerned about our ability to respond to needs that will develop the rest of the year.
Remember that Week of Compassion responds to human needs on our behalf, around the world, around the year. Please consider making a special gift to Week of Compassion, either with your credit card or by writing a check to the church (Vine Street Christian Church, memo: WOC). You can make undesignated gifts for the response fund as well as designated gifts toward specific appeals (Darfur, India flooding, Peru earthquake, etc.).
When natural disasters strike, the poor suffer the most.
When we respond with generous hearts, even the smallest gift changes the world.

Time together

Once I started noticing, the signs kept piling up. Families don't necessarily want to split up when they go to church or participate in mission projects. "American families," according to a note in the Christian Century of May 29, 2007, "are increasingly giving priority to family time over involvement in church. Midweek church activities are especially upstaged by attendance at sports, music and other extracurricular activities. Some families are also reacting to the fact that church activities tend to split up family members according to age and gender rather than bring them together." Being church intergenerationally in worship, spiritual formation, and mission may just be the thing we've been looking for.

Eruption of violence

“Over the next few days, we’ll ponder the sources of Cho Seung-Hui’s rage. There’ll be no shortage of analysts picking apart his hatreds, his feelings of oppression and his dark war against the rich, Christianity and the world at large,” David Brooks writes in his April 19 column in the New York Times. He goes on to describe how neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists, and social scientist have improved our understanding of human behavior – “important knowledge, but it’s had the effect of reducing the scope of the human self.” He is worried about the consequences for individual character and choice. Is the individual a responsible agent or “like a cork bobbing on the currents of giant forces: evolution, brain chemistry, stress and upbringing”? Not a pleasant prospect: we peel back the layers of determination like the many skins of an onion to get to a core we can identify as the morally responsible self, only to end up with nothing but a pile of skins. “There still seems to be such things as selves, which are capable of making decisions and controlling destiny,” Brooks concludes, only “we no longer have any agreement about what they are.”
We want to understand why people do what they do. We want to know how to prevent eruptions of violence like the one at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and teachers dead. We desire for life to flourish and suffering to be reduced, and our explanations will inform our responses. Some will call for tighter security on college campuses, others for more restrictive weapons control, again others will recommend changes to privacy laws or greater cooperation between mental health professionals and law enforcement or stricter control of violent movies or computer games. This is an important and continuing debate, and each perspective has value, but no matter what set of actions governments and school officials adopt, it is more than likely that other eruptions of violence will occur.
“It would be madness to think Cho Seung-Hui could have been saved from his demons with better sermons,” Brooks writes (I hope that the professors responsible for teaching homiletics will have their students carefully read that sentence). We have reached a high level of sophistication in scientifically explaining human behavior, but when violence erupts, one of our most eloquent commentators speaks of “demons” and “salvation.” Demons are manifestations of forces of evil beyond our control, and salvation addresses the reality of a God who intervenes to make creation whole. We believe and proclaim that God has acted in Jesus Christ to save creation from its demons. We celebrate on Easter that God’s love is stronger than the forces of sin and death. We celebrate that God has drawn us from isolation into community. We rejoice that God has raised us from the tombs of our fears and sent us to reach out to others with love. We give thanks to God that we are not isolated indivduals “bobbing [like corks] on the currents of giant forces,” but persons who discover their true selves in relationship with Jesus Christ. Our mission is not to explain, blame, or judge, but to confuse and confound the demons with prayer and acts of kindness and inclusion. God will take care of driving them out.

The Way of the Church

I have been thinking about Sunday school, Christian education in general, and how to balance informational learning with a formational approach. In the middle of ruminating on various thoughts and ideas, I read a phrase that gave me a jolt, “the anemic platitudes many liberal Protestants pass along to their children.” It happened a couple of paragraphs into an article by Nancy Ammerman in The Christian Century. The article caught my attention because Ammerman, who teaches sociology of religion at Boston College, is dealing with the role of Scripture in the religious education of children. Here is the quote in context:

I grew up doing my “daily Bible readings” (we didn’t call it a lectionary, but it was) and memorizing weekly verses in Sunday school. I not only learned to name all 66 books of the Bible, but I could find any given passage faster than almost any “sword drill” competitor around. By the time I was in junior high and active in “Girls Auxiliary” (the Southern Baptist mission organization for girls), I was memorizing whole chapters—Proverbs 31 being among the more daunting. (...) While I might fail a Bible quiz today, I have a formidable reservoir of memory to call on, with words and images that remain a powerful part of my psyche.
I found myself wondering, however, whether my own young adult daughter has that same reservoir of memory. I have no doubt that she knows a great deal about the Bible and holds its values close to her heart; I also know that she simply did not spend her early childhood thoroughly immersed in scriptural words and images that can now be called up to guide her. Her experience probably falls somewhere between the intense biblical surroundings I experienced and the anemic platitudes many liberal Protestants pass along to their children.

Nancy Ammerman, “Memory verses: Teaching children the Bible,” The Christian Century, April 3, 2007, p. 10

Ammerman asserts that “there is reason to worry about the ability of mainline churches to pass on their traditions,” and I agree with much of her assessment. While our congregation doesn’t have to worry about “teachers [who] rarely ask [children] to memorize anything, lest they be accused of indoctrination,” the level of biblical literacy among most of our adult members reflects years of unsuccessful biblical teaching and learning. Much of what passes as Christian education in many mainline Protestant congregations is little more than liberal white-middle-class values dressed up with God-talk, or in Ammerman’s words, “anemic platitudes.” Conservative white-middle-class values dressed up with God-talk are no alternative to pursue.
We are addressing this issue by reading Scripture in worship regularly, and by using it for prayers and other parts of the liturgy; the children, of course, are absent from most of the worship service (worship steeped in Scripture is of course not an educational program; but worship is ultimately the school of the church. We ought to think about keeping the younger children in the sanctuary at least until after the Scripture readings).
Fortunately, our Children’s Worship is also based on the lectionary readings, and the children are exposed to the Bible there – and there’s Vacation Bible School and camp. It would be worthwhile to add up the hours the average grade-schooler participates in religious education over the course of a year; I suspect it would be closer to 30 hours than to 50 (compare that to the hours spent in front of the TV where the average grade-schooler learns how to be a good consumer).
We can address the issue further by making sure that our Sunday school curriculum is biblically grounded, that classes are being offered year-round for all age groups, and that all children attend those classes.
How could we improve things even more? Not with more or better packaged information.
The Way of the Child is a curriculum based entirely on spiritual formation, i.e. the children don’t learn about God, but rather are given time to be with God, and they learn the disciplines to continue to live in God’s presence. I have been thinking about ways to balance the annual Sunday school curriculum with its informational focus by creating blocks when all children’s classes would meet together for periods of multisensory spiritual formation. Doing this would also have the added benefit of giving the teachers a break, and it would encourage leaders with a calling to that type of formational ministry to offer their gifts.
And there's another option. We had an exceptionally good experience with an intergenerational mission trip to New Orleans; the youngest participants were 7, the oldest 82. We discovered how wonderful it is when we live and pray, work and play together. I wonder if we could develop a biblically based, intergenerational program for spiritual formation, basically following the approach of The Way of the Child, but including youth and adults. It could take the place of our current Wednesday night Vespers prayers; it would build community; it would strengthen biblical literacy (we could even add weekly memory verses); it would give families an opportunity to practice disciplines they could take home. This is something I want to think and talk about some more.

March madness

March makes many mad: it’s springtime in Nashville, and love-crazy birds are fighting over mating rights and nesting sites.
Then there’s NCAA basketball. “Confident Purdue Ready For Florida” CBS News headlined on Sunday, just about the time we left church, and before the day was over, it was Florida 74, Purdue 67. Vanderbilt? Vanderbilt! And UT, and Memphis, and if I didn’t mention your team (Go Kansas! Sorry to see you go, Winthrop), consider it part of the madness.
And the church: The place is humming with activity. CROP walkers raising money for Church World Service’s ministries that battle hunger and poverty (CROP Walk, April 1); kids in capes practicing their lines for the musical (Extra! Extra! Good News for the Daily Planet, April 1); the chancel choir inhaling additional singers for a glorious Easter sound; and on top of it all Vine Street’s very own variety of 3M, the mother of all things mad and March – March Ministry Madness! Piles of people together in one room, sitting at round tables, eating and talking, dreaming and planning, developing ministry ideas, creating groups and teams and task forces. And there will be booths, I’ve heard, mostly magnificent ministry booths: membership, music, (there will be an official, anecdotal, statistically challenged, yet ultimate Men’s Group survey; can you think of more ministries that start with an M? Send me your ideas – the winner will get a bag of M&M’s and a pair of free tickets to next year’s Souper Bowl. ), community ministry, education, communication, worship…
We called the event March Ministry Madness, playing, of course, with basketball’s March Madness, but the sad fact is that high-energy activitiy can easily turn into uncentering busyness. Japanese Theologian, Kosuke Koyama writes about our three-miles-an-hour God, a God who moves at a human walking pace. And this is where the madness turns, slowly but deliberately, into a Good Friday meditation.

“Jesus Christ came. He walked towards the ‘full stop’. He lost his mobility. He was nailed down! He is not even at three miles an hour as we walk. He is not moving. ‘Full stop’! What can be slower than ‘full stop’—‘nailed down’? At this point of ‘full stop’, the apostolic church proclaims that the love of God to man [sic] is ultimately and fully revealed. God walks ‘slowly’ because [God] is love. If [God] is not love [God] would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.”
Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God: Biblical Reflections (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1980), p. 7

I want to move at the speed of love, and I believe that, during March Ministry Madness, love will dance.

Extra! Extra! Good News for the Daily Planet

The little super hero is carrying the CROP Walk sign because our little super heroes are excited about ministry!
On Palm Sunday, April 1, the Vine Street Children's Choir will perform their annual spring musical. The title, you guessed it, Extra! Extra! Good News for the Daily Planet! The musical was written by Andra Moran, who is also the Director of the Vine Street Children's Choir. Our singing super heroes will be part of the 10:45 AM worship service, dressed in their finest capes, and if you want to hear them, you better come early, because the sanctuary will be packed!

Together We Walk - Together We Change the World

Nashville CROP Walk

Sunday, April 1

We walk to raise money

for hunger relief

• in the US and around the world


• through emergency food programs, as well as through education, seed and tool programs, advocacy etc.


• provided through Church World Service

I will be walking with the Vine Street team, and I ask for your support.

Workshop for Couples

Create the Marriage You Want

Join Rev. Dr. Joy Samuels as she guides you in a motivating workshop designed to celebrate your commitment & renew your friendship

Vine Street Christian Church, Fitzpatrick House
Saturday, April 21 – 10am-3pm

Please register by email or by calling the church office at 269-5614. The workshop is free, but attendance is limited. Lunch and childcare will be provided.

For more information about the workshop, write me a note.

Stories of faith

Tennesse isn’t California, and Nashville isn’t Santa Barbara, but there are scenes and reflections in Nora Gallagher’s Things Seen And Unseen: A Year Lived In Faith, that resonate with what I hear from people in and around the church. Commercially, the book is old news; it was a bestseller in the late 90’s. But that also means you can get it really cheap from used book sellers.

When I returned to church in 1979, I did not know why. I was and am an ordinary person with ordinary concerns. I’m an ordinary member of my generation. But I am almost always the only practicing Christian at a dinner party, often the only “religious” person, certainly the only one who attends a church regularly, believes in God, prays, has a denomination. Throughout much of the eighties, I knew this about myself in secret and never mentioned it to anyone outside the Church, as if I were gay and still in the closet. (p. 64)

As far as being in the closet is concerned, Nashville is probably the San Francisco of United States Christianity, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into high comfort levels of talking about our relationship with God.

The cause of my secrecy was largely embarrassment. I feared being thought of as fundamentalist or stupid or both. From the time I started attending church again in my late twenties to my middle thirties, I kept my secret. While my friends (…) knew I went to Mass, we rarely spoke about it. To be fair, I didn’t know how to speak about it. My faith at the beginning wasn’t coherent: what words came out were sentimental, defensive, distorted, like bulbs that bloom too early are bitten by frost. (p. 64-65)

Are you afraid of embarrassing yourself talking about how your faith shapes who you are and what you do? I used to, until I became more comfortable with who I am and who I am becoming (which, of course, has been a result of my faith shaping my life). The hard thing is to simply be honest, because honesty makes us vulnerable. On a work trip to New Orleans, back in December and early January, we (ages ranging from 6 to 82 years old) told each other stories every night, simple, honest, beautiful and moving stories. All of them were our responses to a simple question, “Where did you see God today?” You can ask yourself that question every night, and write your answers in a journal. Or better yet, you can ask your spouse, your child, your best friend; it’s a much better invitation to deepening your relationship than “How was your day?”

And if you want to learn from a woman who tells her stories with honesty and beauty, I recommend that old bestseller by Nora Gallagher.

Ash Wednesday

Lent is a journey, a spring trip. The journey begins with ashes. Ashes smeared on our foreheads. Ashes representing all that’s left of our Palm Sunday exuberance. Remember how excited we were, welcoming Jesus into the city? We stopped the traffic on Broadway. We greeted the ruler of our days with expectations of real change, expectations of new life, true community, and a different kind of world. We threw our coats on the road, convinced that we’d be wearing kingdom robes from now on. We waved palm fronds and leafy branches, turning the sides of the road into the lush banks of the river of life.

The palm fronds went up in flames, and all that’s left are ashes. We’re wearing our dusty old coats again – dust and ashes. You alone know what else went up in flames since that day: what hope didn’t survive the attacks of cynicism; what love didn’t last; what certainty turned into anxious doubt – dust and ashes.

We are not the people we thought we could be. We’re not as strong, as loving, as committed, not as patient as we thought. None of us, not one, nominated for Best Disciple at the Golden Zion awards… We’re mortal, we’re human; earth creatures with hopes of heaven.

It would be tempting to wear a dirty grey smudge on our foreheads as a sign of regret and a promise to try harder this time. It would be tempting to engage in impressive acts of pennance, giving up shopping, TV, and red meat for seven weeks. After all, isn’t Lent about giving up stuff?

Nora Gallagher remembers a friend of her’s saying, “Annie’s giving up drinking, Terri’s giving up chocolate, and I’m just giving up.” (Things Seen And Unseen: A Year Lived In Faith, p. 80) When I first read those words, I laughed, but not for very long. Suddenly I heard great sadness in them. I imagined one of my friends saying them, and how I would put my hand on his arm and say, “Don’t give up; you’re not alone.”

And then I read the words again and I smiled. Lent isn’t about giving up this or that – chocolate, or caffeine, or scotch – it really is about “just giving up” and giving in. Lent is about giving up resistance to God’s persistent grace. Lent is about giving in to a love and power greater than our own, strong enough to save us. Lent is about learning to trust the promise again.

Lent is a journey, a spring trip. The journey begins with ashes smeared on our foreheads, and the smudge shows the outline of a cross. At the cross, all our journeys end. At the cross, everything goes up in flames. The cross is the end of the world – and the beginning of the new creation. The journey ends with the joy of mortals who discover that the tomb is empty. The journey ends with new life flourishing on the banks of the river of life.

Youth Sunday at Vine Street

The work trip to New Orleans after Christmas was an amazing experience; to reflect on it in worship through music, images, scripture, and poetry, and to present our tears, our questions, our hope, and our small acts of faith as an offering to God was beautiful and moving. I am humbled by the wisdom of our youth, and their passion and creativity fills me with hope.

Adaptive change

Holy Conversations is a good resource for strategic planning. It's very flexible, i.e. adaptable for specific needs, as well as simple. I read through it once, and am now reading it with a small group of leaders. We'll discuss the basic concepts and determine the scope (and length) of the planning process. Part of the discussion will be funding and use of an outside facilitator.
I'm also reading Good to Great by Jim Collins. It is based on research with for-profit corporations, but the findings can easily be transferred to organizations in general: it all boils down to identity, context, purpose, and relationships.