Study Leave Report: Encounter with the Lost

Encounter with the Lost:
Today I had an interesting conversation with a frustrated woman who has been looking for a church. Here is the verbatim story she told me, as best as I can recall…

"So I was wanting to go back to church since I hadn’t been there for a long time.. Something was just missing. My husband’s Episcopalian and I’m Catholic, so we thought we would look for something both of us could agree on, and we started looking around. We went to a church and I couldn’t believe what happened. We walked in and a man came over to welcome us, but instead of saying, “Hello,” or “It’s nice to meet you,” the first thing out of his mouth was, “You understand that if you are not a member of this Synod you cannot take communion.” I should have walked out then , but I thought it was so out of line that it had to be just this guy having a bad day or something. So we sat down and then the pastor came over. I thought this was nice for him to take the time to welcome someone he recognized as a visitor. You’d think so, right? Well you wouldn’t believe this. All he said was “I want you to know that you can’t take communion with us. “ I was thinking to myself, “To hell with you.” But it gets worth. We should have just gotten up and walked out, but we stayed around. After church? Someone else came over to greet us, and they handed us a membership card that wanted to know how much money we made. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I gave up looking for a church. Just look at all the crap that goes on, and they wonder why people don’t go to church? Shouldn’t they be living the virtue of the faith, and all they do is tell you you don’t mean anything to them but money and you have no business being there? It’s terrible.

"I left my last church because all they did was fight over one scandal after another. They would just get through with one problem and they would have to deal with another one. All anyone wanted to do there was fight about stupid stuff, and never do anything to help you find peace and virtue. It’s ridicules. I mean I’ve just stopped looking. It’s not worth the fight."

Three things I learn from this that all of us should take into account:
First, this woman made up her mind pretty much within the first 30 seconds of walking in the door. The man who greeted her had all the ability to set the tone for the visit. Think of it, the first person a visitor meets, maybe it’s you, has a great gift to extend the hospitality of our Lord, right then and there. This is not great program. You don’t have to be elected to an office to do this. We just need just a willingness to be a friend to the searching soul in the same way Jesus is a friend to sinners. After all, who of us is not searching for some sense of comfort and care on any Sunday when we also walk into worship.

Second, this woman was not interested in doctrinal barriers or church rules, but that is all her heard. She was looking for a place where the virtues of life would be exhibited and nurtured. How often does the religion, or the rules, or the doctrine (as important as they are) instead of being guidelines for being a church, become barriers to someone’s searching heart from finding God. Maybe it is a good idea to keep church business to the enclaves of committee debates, but when living the church, it is incumbent upon us to live with grace that welcomes, cares, comforts, nurtures and loves.

Third, the failures of this one church have hurt all churches. Simply because the experience was so offensive, this woman and her husband gave up all together on searching for a relationship with God through the church. That is a shame. It tells us that what we do and how we do it may have profound influences beyond the limitations of our walls.

In summary, whatever the program, whatever the denomination, whatever the rules and order, how ever we end up structuring the church for the next phase of our ministry and growth, the most critical component will be the warm and comforting heart of the parishioner who welcomes the lost and suffering soul into the fellowship of our Lord’s praise and glory.

Future of Ministry

Dear Friends:

Our finances and structure will change in June. And we need your help to do the correctly.

The manner in which we have been doing ministry for the past six years will not be sustainable beyond June 30, simply because the design we have been using is inappropriate for where we are and where we need to be going. The Session, the Treasurer, the Presbytery and I are keenly aware that if we continue using this structure we will suffocate.

Our mission strategy for the past six years was put in place in November 2004 specifically to secure a pastor-driven program for closing out the ministry in Holyoke, planting a new church and constructing a building in a new mission field. All of us were very successful at this. The ten year task was accomplished in five.

We now need to be equally successful at making our church’s ministry expansive in its comfort the sick and dying, care and feeding of the hungry, and the nurture of hurt and suffering souls if we are to continue to flourish. In many ways this is a grand opportunity. All the energy and resources we put into building a building, can now be directed to service, compassion, teaching, comforting, healing all in the name of Christ our Lord.

This week I will be exploring how to structure our church given our size and financial position so as to advise the Session. But I need your help in this. All of us need to be part of the discussion. Please begin by participating in our Session’s “Designing Our Next Phase of Ministry” questionnaire that was distributed on Easter and is available again this morning.

The questionnaire is asks only five questions. It’s short, but we need everyone’s input. We need to ourselves protect against making inaccurate assumptions from limited input. Answer the questions, drop it at the office, or mail it back.

You can download a PDF version from the website, www.PioneerPresbyterian.org.

Ideas can be shared also on FaceBook; search “Life in the Meadows,” or “First Presbyterian, Granby MA.”

Comments can also be posted on the Pastor Blog, at LifeSparkofFaith.blogspot.com, or Google search “Life Spark of Faith Blog.”

A Peronal Word from Haiti

Dear All,

It’s been two and a half months since our world changed. Since then, Rodney has made three trips back from Haiti, Nancy has just left my side for the very first time, dozens of visitors, hundreds of calls, and thousands of notes have inspired my soul and hastened my healing.

Yesterday afternoon I saw pictures of the rubble that was our apartment. Last night was a horrible night. The night before, we saw a re-enactment of the Last Supper. I cried -- not just for me and Haiti. The day before that was a breakthrough – I finally remembered how to get to the therapist’s without getting lost. Wow!! -- -- the flood of emotions that are triggered by the big events are reflections of countless ones that make up the moments of every day -- -- and night.
I am convinced there is no way to even try to thank each and every one of you personally. The emotional roller coaster would just be too great. I watched my husband cry as he put on a pair of shoes given to him by an old friend – and understood the depth of sorrow and meaning. I’ve seen Nancy strengthen by phone calls from new friends giving counsel on medicines, or doctors, or the horrible quagmire called insurance. How can one begin to say thanks for a line in an email that brings back hundreds of memories of good times or shared pains. The offers of help, a flower, a card, a chocolate Easter bunny, a visitor from a hundred or a thousand miles away or a borrowed car or home; how can I begin to say thanks.
Behind all the tangibles are the prayers which have gotten me to here – wherever ‘here’ is at this moment. Thank you each for the memories, and prayers you have so unselfishly shared.

Rodney is here in Florida with me for two weeks. Nancy will return when he leaves for Haiti. Friday I visit the spine doctor again and hope the back brace removal begins. Frustrations with not remembering, not being able to type or figure out the computer, blurry vision, or just the impossibility of doing everything expected is slowly turning to successful conquests., for the most part. Walking is a joy – small steps, not many, exhausting, and bracketed by a walker but still a joy.
Rather than looking toward a very confusing “ahead”, I find great comfort looking back each week to see how far I’ve come.

Sharyn

Easter Morning!

The morning broke with gloom of an overcast sky: grey, damp, cold. “Se la vi,” for Easter. Life is what it is: riddled with gloomy mornings when your heart yearns for sunshine.

Gradually, while pouring the morning java, a diffused light bounced across the kitchen from the east door; not terribly bright, but enough to hint at the beaming glory hidden behind the clouds, a glory we often forget when the days are dull.

It’s now 8:00 am and the sky has yielded to a shining antithesis of morning gloom! I have to squint at the computer monitor to see what in heaven’s name I’m tapping out on the keyboard. A fitting climax to the Easter Vigil.

Enjoy the Easter day. However gloomy your skies may be, this is a day that reminds us the spirit has more power over darkness than we might think. Behind the gloom is a light waiting to shine in every corner.

Pilgrimage through the Mundane

Here I am the day before Holy Week ironing pillow shams that Linda has sewn for the couches in the reception area of the new church. Ashley’s helping to cut out the fabric. Grant’s gathering up the week’s trash.

The chores are the same, but the tone is different than on other Saturdays. The phone is ringing with family making arrangements to join us for church and an Easter meal. Linda’s reminding us that she wants to have the pillow done by Easter. Grant’s looking over his work schedule for the Holy Week. Hope’s texting about when to be picked up from college for the holy days. The preparations are making the coming week less a matter of daily chores than one where the daily chores are becoming a pilgrimage, a ritual, a purpose.

We might have any number of activities that flow into our holy days. They seem to put some continuity to the passage of time, and separate the mundaneness of life from itself. Maybe that is why Moses read the law to the people on regular intervals, and the history of the Jewish people was (as still is) rehearsed every year, and why we let the otherwise mundane chores of what would otherwise be just another week begin to tally a new meaning. It’s a pilgrimage, a passage. Let it live in its fullness all the days of this week.

Water to Wine

It was a bit strange this morning. The deacons who were to prepare communion took ill and couldn’t make it in. Some other’s stepped in, did the bread dicing bit (a sanitary way of sharing the “body of Christ” during a noro flu outbreak), but couldn’t find the juice for the communion cup. With twenty-minutes to spare there was barely time to make it to Cumby Farms and back.

W.W.J.D.? (What Would Jesus Do?) He was in a similar predicament at a wedding. “Nearby [to Jesus] stood six stone water jars. Jesus said ‘Fill them with water. Now draw some out and take it to the banquet.’ They did so ... the water turned into wine.”

Don’t think it didn’t cross our minds to try the same trick. What if, what if, what if we actually had filled some empty jars with water, brought them to the banquet table of communion, and found it has turned into wine? That would have knocked a few socks off, eh?

Jesus and the water-to-wine thing was awesome. My brother-in-law always brings out a pitcher of water at family dinners and asks me to do the same thing. Of course I can’t.

Truth is, we are who we are. We’re not Jesus. We are children of God with specific abilities in an unambiguous time and place unique to us. We so often strive, however, to be more than we are, like some superhero. If we didn’t, Marvel comics wouldn’t exist. It a bit harder being who we are than fanaticizing about what we are not.

It would have been awesome to have pulled off that stunt this morning, but we didn’t have to. In a strange way, Jesus did the water-to-wine thing. Our attention was soon directed to the bottom shelf of the kitchen cabinet where we found the extra supply of communion “wine.” We just had to look a little harder to see the miracles blasting out

Punxsutawney Phil says, "No surfing yet!"

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on February 2. I guess that means I can’t start waxing my surf board until March 16.

The weird Groundhog Day event seems to have grown out of an ancient February 2nd European festival known as Candlemas that celebrated the day Mary and Joseph presented their baby Jesus at the Temple. Clergy in Europe would bless household candles marking the growing light of our Lord that would illuminate the darkness of the home just as the light of Christ would illuminate the darkness of the soul.

The Germans had evidently blended the Candlemas festival with some Teutonic legends to conclude that if the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day an animal would cast a shadow and dive back into its hole predicting six more weeks of bad weather.

Here we are centuries later, a continent away, and a little groundhog is Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has cornered the market on Candlemas since the first Groundhog Day of 1886. I guess that doesn’t really matter anymore. Who lights their homes with candles anyways, and there’s something about blessing a compact fluorescent that just doesn’t seem to convey the same ardor.

What does pique my curiosity is that the ancients seemed to have a sense of harmony with nature. Cows lay down before a storm. The brown strip of the woolly caterpillar gets longer. Elephants head to higher ground before an earthquake. Researches simply understand that animals have a keen sense of their surroundings and react to nature’s anomalies long before our busy minds human minds can.

A little Punxsutawney Phil every winter might reminds us that there is a lot going on around us the close our eyes to. And when we do, we may be missing some of the greatest displays of God’s creation. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness there of.” (psalm 24)