Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may become friends.
Maya Angelou
1928-2014
Shared by Redeemer Ambassadors
This week is Ascension Sunday. The time has come for Jesus to end his visit to earth and return to His Father (and ours) in heaven.
Read the lesson from Acts 1:1-11 and focus on verses 4 and 5 and the appearance of the angelic messengers at the end in verses 10 and 11.
While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Jesus is speaking to people who are accustomed to waiting. They’ve been waiting as a people for the promised Messiah for centuries. They are just getting used to the idea that the Messiah is with them. If they think the waiting is over, they have another think coming.
In this narrative, time takes on a new dimension for the disciples.
Things are different now. Jesus gives his final instructions to the disciples. Return to Jerusalem and wait. It won’t be long before they will be baptized anew—this time with the Holy Spirit.
The disciples respond with all the humanity they cannot escape. They want a timetable. Jesus tells them that some things are none of their business. His promise to return softens this rebuke. But he leaves no doubt. God is in charge.
And so the long-confused disciples add a new dimension to their faith. They have a short-term promise and a long-term promise. Both of them are somewhat vague.
We’ll discover the answer to the short-term promise in a couple of weeks — on Pentecost. What a relief this must have been to the disciples waiting in Jerusalem! It was fairly immediate proof that God keeps his promises.
The second promise shapes our relationship with God today.
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
The early apostles believed fervently that they would see this second coming in their lifetimes. Two thousand years later, we still live our faith in waiting.
What do we do while we wait?
Today’s object is an alarm clock. We’re going to use it to help us think about time and what it represents to our faith.
Let’s review the features of an average alarm clock.
First, there is the dial—digital or analog—doesn’t matter. Time stares us in the face even if it’s on a sundial. It reminds us that we have to be somewhere in ten minutes or that we forgot to make that call. It reminds us that in two hours dinner has to be on the table. That dial keeps us locked in the present.
Then there is the “set alarm” feature. Ah! We can plan. We can schedule. We can feel in control!
Then there is the alarm. That audio prod. That spur in our side. The daily “call to action.”
How do we react?
Modern man solved the confusion between our inner desires and the call to action.
The snooze button.
Put life on hold for ten more minutes, one press of a button after another.
God made a promise to us. He will come again. How many times do we have to press the snooze button?
That’s not for us to know. It’s for us to live with and work for!
All we have to do is wait and put that short-term promise — the fire of the Holy Spirit — to work while we wait for that second promise to be fulfilled. You believe, don’t you?
2x2virtualchurch adds a slideshow and object lesson to our library each week. There are nearly 100 in our collection. If you like our easy, interactive approach to teaching adult learners, reinforced during the worship, please consider subscribing.Feel free to share!
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The slideshow is for use on Easter 6, on which many congregations observe the Ascension, which always falls on a Thursday.
The slides focus on the gospel lesson but also depict the joy of Psalm 47.
2x2virtualchurch adds a slideshow and object lesson to our library each week. There are nearly 100 in our collection. If you like our easy, interactive approach to teaching adult learners, reinforced during the worship, please consider subscribing.Feel free to share!
Thank you.
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They know what they mean.
Today’s author is Consultant Susan Beaumont. She opens her post by telling about the stunned looks she gets from congregations when she uses the word discernment.
It’s not that people don’t know what the word means. It is more a sense that the choice of that word over more common words leads us wondering, “What are you up to?”
Beaumont acknowledges this distrust with a perceptive quote.
Thomas H Green, S.J., says, “Many people today express well-grounded misgivings about community discernment, and even feel uncomfortable with the word, ‘discernment.’ It can easily be a polite and pious name for a ‘tyranny of the majority,’ a way of attaching the Lord’s name and authority to what most of the group want, or believe he [sic] must want. If this happens, then, as we have seen, ‘discernment’ becomes a way of manipulating God to agree with our convictions concerning action and decision-making.”
Even so—knowing that the language is not trusted—church leaders keep at it. They enjoy the confusion and the sense of need it creates.
Every church governing board wrestles with where the congregation’s idyllic mission statement meets the facts of life—the paying of the mortgage, property upkeep, utilities and staff. A lot of attention must be on immediate needs. But wise governing boards know they must look to the future. They know they are the business arm of the Church.
Perhaps the “discernment” process needs to develop its vocabulary with a couple of other concepts.
We don’t remember much about the group efforts of the churches in Corinth, Philippi, Jerusalem, Rome, New York, etc. But we do remember what Paul, Peter, Timothy, Mary, Martin Luther, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. did.
Does the church have room for new saints?
The Pomegranate As Christian Symbol
This Sunday’s gospel, John 14:15-21, might be a good Sunday to resurrect one of the more obscure symbols of our faith.
John 14 is part of the five-chapter Farewell message of Jesus. Our Lord is desperate in his fervor to lay everything on the table for his disciples—a last attempt to make sure his vagabond followers understand the significance of His mission.
The Crucifixion and Resurrection loom.
The disciples listening to Jesus have yet to experience the Passion. But we are looking backward. We’ve been rereading the Resurrection stories—the women in the garden, Thomas and the disciples, and the travelers on the road to Emmaus.
It’s not such a strange time to revisit the last and longest recorded sermon by the Lord Himself.
The ideas are a little complicated. They bear another look.
The gist of the message is that God did not make us, His children, to live alone and apart from Him and His son. We are all in this together. There’s more to it, more about just how the relationship works. That’s what the passage from Acts points out. (Acts 17:22-31) But central message of the Gospel is pivotal.
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. —John 14:20
Huh?
The pomegranate was/is a favorite fruit of God. It may even have been the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Life. God gave Moses orders to use the pomegranate on the priestly robes to be worn by Aaron.
Pomegranates are in season from March to May in Israel—Eastertime.
As Christianity moved north and west, the imagery was lost. There were no pomegranates growing in our orchards. But they are abundant everywhere now.
Show your congregation some pomegranate imagery. Then hold up a pomegranate.
Slice it open and notice the abundance of seeds.
Jesus is in the Father and we are in Him. The pomegranate is a good reminder. We are not alone. We are in this together.
2x2virtualchurch adds a slideshow and object lesson to our library each week. There are nearly 100 in our collection. If you like our easy, interactive approach to teaching adult learners, please consider subscribing.Feel free to share!
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This week’s lessons are not the easiest to depict visually, but the concepts are important to our understanding of our relationship with God.
Last week’s gospel is a preamble to this week’s. Consider combining the slides of last week with this week for fuller review of John 14.
Here are some images to inspire thought and conversation around these foundational scriptures.
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Today’s post from the Consulting Group that was once the consulting team of the Alban Institute is by the Rev. Dr. John Wimberley. Dr. Wimberley served an urban congregation for several decades. He knows about the challenges of the urban church scene and overcame many of them.
His post today talks about the discernment process—a current hot topic in the Church.
He points out that when he was engaged in ministry in Washington, D.C., he didn’t know anything about discernment, but he and his congregation engaged in the process without the big word.
Most congregations engaged in discernment WAY-Y-Y-Y long before church leaders labeled it. Assigning this big word to the decision-making process makes it more formal and more formidable. Now we tend to think we need help from the outside to make group decisions. Official help. Paid help. Help that will keep the faithful in line.
Pastor Wimberley points out that the discernment process requires abandoning personal agendas.
There are other agendas in play in the church discernment process.
Oddly, this process with the big name promotes a hands-off stance. Everyone thinks a system is in play with which they should not interfere. This discourages member involvement and empowers the corporate agenda.
Personal agendas are not all bad. Sometimes, people with personal agendas are actually thinking about other people!
Personal agendas created many a church here in the Land of the Free. They are still creating modern church movements and storefront faith communities in neighborhoods abandoned by mainline denominations that discerned that ministry was no longer economically feasible. When people can’t pay for a church with all the modern expectations, they don’t deserve any church at all.
When immigrants began flocking to America in search of religious freedom, many were fleeing the threat of jail for daring to dissent in the Church that had the power of State. There was no money for full-time pastors. Labor and land were donated. Personal agendas overcame the lack of resources.
These churches started small. Some never grew to be very large.
The large church is a fairly new concept. It gained ground in post-industrial America. Consolidation was the order of the day.
Church leaders saw advantages. Big churches could better support clergy and hierarchy—a new and continuing agenda!
Back when we, who live in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave were both freer and braver, the discernment process usually took place seamlessly at the local level. Today, many congregations turn to outsiders for help. Denominations encourage this with the “interim pastor” concept.
Here’s what can happen.
How much force is used in the discernment process is up to the regional leaders.
We, at Redeemer, have experienced the worst with the regional body attempting to lock out the congregation and suing local leaders, forgetting the reason many immigrants came to America—and forgetting the admonitions of the Bible. They gained support among other churches with an effective and ongoing defamation campaign, easily implemented with clergy gossip.
We’ve seen the discernment process take place with NO involvement of the congregation. But the denomination spreads their story of how they worked with Redeemer in a process of discernment. TRUTH: None of us were invited.
The discernment process can become a manipulative tool. The big word helps with that — makes it seem righteous.
Dr. Wimberley is correct. Selfish agendas must be put aside.
Easier said than done.
But Our Eyes Keep Looking to the Horizon for the Masked Rider
The consultant author of this post, David Brubaker, writes that congregations struggling with change (in other words, all congregations) often look for a dynamic leader who can turn things around. The benefits, he explains, are often short-term and over the course of five years can do more damage than good.
He calls it Lone Ranger leadership. (It’s probably misnamed. More about that later.)
What Brubaker describes as Lone Ranger leadership is exactly the model that is promoted by regional leadership. They even send their own Lone Ranger in. They call it an Interim Pastor. The Interim Pastor is supposed to turn things around or at least head things in the right direction before riding off into the sunset.
Congregations are expected to call a pastor not only as spiritual leader and resident theologian but also as chief executive officer. It is an unwritten rule of church leadership, a carryover from the centuries we spent in the Middle Ages. We thought we left this behind somewhere in the last 500 years of Reformation, but we keep reverting. The pastor is the boss.
Consultant Brubaker is right. This doesn’t work. Consultants aren’t likely to say so (it would be biting the hand that feeds) but the pastor as CEO may be the root of church decline.
If you read congregational constitutions, you will find that it isn’t meant to work. Most church constitutions (at least in the Lutheran tradition) assign most leadership roles to the people.
This is as it should be. The people will outlast any single leader. They carry the mantle of the congregation’s culture into the home and community. They or their descendants will be there in the pew long after a pastor decides to move on for whatever reason.
That doesn’t mean the lay culture is always right. Nor does it mean that lay culture cannot or should not budge. Skills must be honed and updated. Procedures tweaked. Customs enhanced, if not changed. The true role of leadership is to make sure the congregation is empowered to lead—not just comply.
It all comes down to love.
A loving leader can put aside personal agenda for the good of the group and for individual’s within the group. A loving leader sees each member as more than a statistic. A loving leader applauds fledgling leadership efforts and helps without criticism when they flutter without flying.
A loving leader knows that true growth is a slow process—that those fifty new members that came as a result of an initial charismatic offering might not be in it for the long haul.
Yet every time there is a congregational change, the “search committee” will be tempted and encouraged to look for leadership that will override the local leaders—the long-haul leaders. (In Redeemer’s case, the local leaders were all but asked to leave before everyone was locked out!)
Most congregational conflict is a predictable turf war in that regard. Unless leaders —both lay and clergy— adopt the biblical model of humility in a search for justice, mercy and compassion.
But let’s get back to the Lone Ranger. He —with Tonto— rode into help at the sign of trouble. He empowered the people he helped. He provided the help they needed—no more than that. He didn’t look for credit or reward. That silver bullet he left behind was a way of saying, “Glad to be of service. Now you can do it. Take it from here!”
