Thoughts from a United Methodist Clergy Couple in Southeast Kansas
From the monthly archives:
Camp Chippewa is a United Methodist camping and retreat center in the Kansas East Conference located near Ottawa, Kansas. Each summer Camp Chippewa offers Christian camps for kids going into grades K-12. There is an early bird discount on all camps for those who register by April 1. If you are interested in seeing what Camp Chippewa has to offer, please contact Pastor Jenny for more information at johnandjenny@revcollins.com.
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Gary Beach, Director of Connectional Ministries for the Kansas East Conference directed me to this gem. This probably won’t be the last time you see it.
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The March 2009 edition of The Parish Visitor, the church’s newsletter, is available on the downloads page of www.coffeyvillefirstumc.org.
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Prompted by a post from Adam Hamilton, senior pastor at Church of the Resurrection, my friend and collegue David Livingston has an excellent entry on the future of the United Methodist Church. I commend both of these posts to you. Locally I can see leading indicators of recovery here at Coffeyville First.
Links:
adamhamilton.cor.org/2009/02/12/in-44-years-us-umc-to-be-no-more/
davidsthoughtson.blogspot.com/2009/02/future-of-umc.html
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I removed the ash from my forehead with a wet washcloth and without incident. (This probably won’t make sense if you weren’t at the Ash Wednesday service tonight.)
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Todd Agnew’s “Come Ye Sinners” seemed to be a natural choice for this evening’s Ash Wednesday service. Lent is about returning to God and preparing to celebrate the resurrection. This stanza seemed particularly appropriate.
Come ye weary, and heavy-laden
Lost and ruined by the fall
And if you tarry until you’re better
You will never come at all
There is no point in waiting, we cannot get better without God’s help.
*About the above photograph: “The Open Road” by Trey Ratcliff, Flickr user: Stuck in Customs, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic License.
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It is time to start planning for Vacation Bible School for the Summer of 2009 and we need your help. Every year we need people who are willing to help with the different parts of VBS: Decorating, Story Time, Snacks, Recreation, Discovery Time, Assembly Time, Music, Crafts and Publicity. We also need volunteers to bring items for us to borrow during VBS to decorate the church. This year’s theme is “Camp E.D.G.E.: Exploring and Discovering God Everywhere”. So, this year we are looking for items to borrow to create a camping environment, such as: green artificial Christmas trees (without the lights), tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, canteens or water bottles, camping equipment, camp chairs, etc. Whether or not you have helped out with VBS before, if you are willing and able to help this year in whatever way, please let Pastor Jenny know at johnandjenny@revcollins.com, or at (620) 251-3240. Thanks in advance for your support of this fun summer adventure! More details to come soon.
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This past Sunday, we used not one, not two, not three, but four scripture readings in worship (the fourth was from Psalm 50 and was used as a call to worship). Why four readings? That’s a question I’ll now attempt to answer. All four of the readings came from what is known as the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary is an ancient tradition by which the church attempts to cycle through the breadth (and to a lesser extent) the depth of the entire Bible every three years. In the words of The United Methodist Book of Worship, the lectionary:
provides a systematic approach to the use of Scripture in worship…. [it] follows the outline of the Christian year. In it the Church celebrates the central mystery of our faith: the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
In all honesty, the above response answers only why we used the four scripture readings we did, not why we use four scripture readings. I could give you a long rambling explanation, but for a more concise summary, I’m going to reference Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright. In the book Simply Christian, Wright states that “telling the story, rehearsing the mighty acts of God: this is near the heart of Christian worship.” The reading of scripture is near to the heart of Christian worship because the Bible is the account of God’s mighty acts of creation, redemption, and final consummation. Wright continues:
… reading the Bible aloud is always central to Christian worship. Cutting back on this for whatever reason—trimming readings so the service doesn’t go on too long, chanting scripture passages so that they become merely part of a musical performance, or reading only the few verses the preacher intends to preach about—misses the point. The reason we read scripture in worship isn’t primarily to inform or remind the congregation about some biblical passage or theme they might have forgotten. Likewise, it’s much more than a peg to hang a sermon on, though preaching from one or more of the readings is often a wise plan. Reading scripture in worship is, first and foremost, the central way of celebrating who God is and what he’s done.
Now I’ll admit that we don’t always have four readings, sometimes we have only three or very rarely, only two, but I still believe we’re practicing what Wright preaches, namely reading scripture, significant chunks of scripture, as “the central way of celebrating who God is and what he’s done.” Earlier in the same chapter, Wright asserts that worship is the natural reaction to a glimpse of “the reality of God.” The great thing about the reading of scripture (and other aspects of worship, and indeed worship itself, taken as a whole) is that it is not only a natural way to respond to catching a glimpse of God, it is a way, a means of grace, by which we put ourselves in a place where we are more likely to catch another glimpse.
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This morning’s sermon is now online. It’s available at: http://blog.coffeyvillefirstumc.org/archives/category/podcasts.
You can also subscribe to our podcast through iTunes.
(iTunes is available as a free download.)
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I try to keep up with the blogs of several of my clergy colleagues. One of the issues that has been much discussed lately is worship. Mores specifically what is worship and why do we worship. At first glance it seems like an easy question, but coming up with a compact, coherent answer is quite difficult. I’ll begin by saying that I really resonate with much of what Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright said in his chapter on worship in Simply Christian. Wright observes that “when we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven’t yet really understood who he is or what he’s done.” Wright asserts that “reading scripture in worship is, first and foremost, the central way of celebrating who God is and what he’s done.” I would summarize and assert that worship is, first and foremost, a natural celebratory reaction to who God is and what God has done in the creation, redemption and final consummation of all that is.
Others have different definitions and that does not surprise, nor particularly disturb me. What does surprise and somewhat disturb me is the complete lack of any mention of the third general rule. I believe that worship is primarily a celebration of who God is and what God has done, but I also want to talk about other aspects of worship as well. My desire to do so is rooted in my Wesleyan heritage. John Wesley gave the early Methodists (and by extension United Methodists today) three general rules: 1. do no harm; 2. do good; and 3. attend to the ordinances of God. The ordinances of God included worship, the public reading of scripture, preaching, and the Eucharist. Clearly, public worship is a large part of the third rule. In all these things Wesley believed (and I still believe) that we encounter the presence of the living God. But the ordinances of God are not ends in and of themselves they are means to an end. That end is summed up in Bishop Reuben Job’s rephrasing of the third rule as “stay in love with God.” I believe that staying in love with God is an important reason, sufficient in it’s own right, to worship God.
So although God is the primary focus in worship, that focus affects those who are worshiping. When we worship, we encounter the presence of the living God—by the Spirit’s power, and not any intrinsic power within the means or the worshiper. Worship is therefore the celebration of who God is and what God has done and has the result of helping us encounter and remain in love with the God we celebrate.*
Now, in my never-resting mind, this is still not completely satisfactory, because—as the content of the psalms (ancient and holy hymns) reminds us—vital worship has long included the lifting up of our sorrows, concerns, and woes to God. But perhaps we need only expand the definition of who God is and what God has done to encompass the understanding of God as the God who hears our cry and responds in mercy.
*A caveat in line with a Wesleyan understanding of the means of grace: I need to state that we do not necessarily encounter God every or even most Sunday mornings. God is sovereign, free to work or not work within and without of the means of Grace.
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