Without the grounding of faith and practice, I find myself just making it (sometimes barely) day to day. It is important to keep at it everyday.
November 29, 2008
November 26, 2008
2008 November 23- Knowing the Heart of God
Reading from Ezekiel, we looked at what we can know about God and what we can emulate…
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November 19, 2008
2008 November 16- Hope and also Passion
This Sunday we had a guest preacher in the morning and an in house preacher at 5:00 and 7:00. The morning preacher was my friend Teresa Smith; she spoke about hope. Teresa’s sermon includes her communion prayer. The audio quality of her sermon is also poor so it is very quiet in some places.
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The evening preacher was Deke Miller and his topic was passion.
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November 11, 2008
2008 November 11- Mission Celebration
Our message was brought by Danielle Roeber, Everett Moore, Roseanne Snyder, and Karen Miller. Unfortunately the recording did not take between microphone exchange and other technical challenges. I have summarized some of what was said. We invite you to consider making mission a part of your everyday living and also consider other mission chances like making sandwiches with the team, doing a local mission like Rebuilding Together or tutoring in a local school or a longer extended mission like our Navajo team. My brief summary does not do the stories folks told justice.
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November 7, 2008
What might we do differently at Christmas?
I have been thinking for a long time about trying to make Christmas less about the stuff and more about the Jesus I love and serve. It is difficult in an economy driven by consuming to live that way- it is considered almost un-American to do so, at least by some people. Still Christmas could be more meaningful and hopeful and less stressful if we could find another way to approach the season. I have found this book, Unplug the Christmas Machine, to be helpful in re-thinking what is important about the season.
November 6, 2008
Election day lines- cool…
I arrived at 4:45AM to open the doors for election workers at Saint James to find not only early arriving election workers but people beginning to line up for voting. By the time I let election workers in and turned on lights and checked that their coffee and hot water were brewing, I went back outside to unlock our overflow parking gate. As I walked back to the building, I was struck by how a line was already forming of about 100 people, still about 30 minutes before the polls were to open! In my normal Jamesian way, I kidded with the folks in line that this was just the way every Sunday morning was at Saint James with people lining up hours before to get into worship. I am not sure their bleary eyes showed any appreciation for my lighthearted jibe.
I began to wonder why we don’t have folks lining up for worship an hour before it happens. Is it because we only have to line up to vote every four years (in a General Election anyway) and worship is an every Sunday event? Is it simply more compelling to be part of a democratic process and let one’s voice be heard than listening hopefully, expectantly for the voice of God while giving honor and praise to God? Is it that worship is simply not compelling enough itself no matter where you go? I’ll be honest (the theme from last week’s worship message) in saying I don’t know the answers. I read a lot about what keeps people from having real interest in church- how many times can you take being told how bad you are and how bad your neighbors are and how the world is simply a bad place? How do we reconcile that message with the beauty we see, the love we feel, the people we meet (at least some of them?)? Church just doesn’t seem interested sometimes in anything but its own voice and not that of others struggling to figure out if life has any meaning and if so, what it is.
It is always my hope that we will model a kind of faith inquiry at Saint James that welcomes all people wherever they are and will encourage that inquiry while at the same time speaking our own stories in a non-judgmental/non-apologetic way.
Anyway, I guess I’ll look forward to the day people line up to get in for worship…
2008 November 2- Honesty (late in coming)
This week I spoke about honesty using the biblical text of Isaiah 59:9-15. It was an unusual message in the fact that about midway through a person indicated disagreement with me and I responded; after that someone asked a question which prompted me to turn the congregation to find answers. Part of the challenge about that is that we had not prepared for such a response by having microphones available for the responses and questions- so there are long silences in the recording. I expect to put up the 7:00 Saint James-Kingstowne message a little later today which is more complete without silences. It was a wonderful collaborative message- unfortunately, it will have to live on in God’s memory alone…
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As promised, I have been able to edit and upload the message from SJK (Saint James-Kingstowne). Remember this message was transformed by the morning message. Take a listen!
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November 3, 2008
Trying the Honesty Challenge
This past Sunday (November 2nd) I issued a challenge to the folks in worship to try being honest in the coming week. I thought I’d check in with a post and poll so people could either share their experience in comment form or simply respond to the poll. It would be interesting to know how honesty is going in people’s lives…