St. Blogory's: the internet café at St. Gregory's Episcopal Church, Deerfield, IL

Musing on McLaren's emc: Barely Dipping Below the Surface

This is the sixth in a periodic series of reflections on Brian D. McLaren's everything must change. Quotations used by kind permission of the author, with page citations from the edition featured on the Emerging Church Reading List to your right.

". . . Even in the United States, where church attendance figures are comparatively strong, church leaders can't help but notice a rapid decline in local church involvement among younger generations and wonder what to do about it. Church leaders often begin by criticizing the young people: 'What's wrong with them?' But eventually, some leaders ask a more productive question: 'What's wrong with us?' Typically, they proceed on a rather superficial level, talking about cosmetics: musical styles, ambience and lighting, digital projection, dress codes, various ways of getting 'cooler' or 'hipper.' These are of some importance perhaps, but certainly not the whole story. Then some thoughtful leaders go a little deeper, addressing the need to be relevant to culture and to contextualize their ministry in today's world. But they're still barely dipping below the surface" (p. 32).

Brian is just warming up for his diagnosis (shared by many others) as to why, for many people (and not only the young) Christianity may seem to be "a failed religion." In the meantime, his words about the superficial levels of musical style and getting "cooler" resonated with me, especially his recognition that they might be of "some importance."

My first parish experience after seminary was at Trinity Cathedral in Davenport, Iowa, from 1978 to 1981. It was an interesting time and place: an essentially conservative parish and Dean, and yet some of its members had embraced charismatic renewal and the healing ministry, including the Dean. He liked to use the Church of England's Alternative Worship Liturgies, which were similar to the contemporary services in the then fairly new Book of Common Prayer 1979.

In 1981 Tom Bowers, the Rector of St. Bartholomew's in New York City, called me to be the Director of the Community Club, an outreach ministry of the parish to the up-and-out, young men and women beginning their careers in the City, and who needed a "home away from home." Nothing in my past church experience had prepared me for St. Bart's Nine O'Clock Service, with contemporary settings for the service as well as contemporary songs. At first I just didn't care for the service at all, but in time I realized how it appealed to people for whom the traditional and more formal liturgies were deadly.

By the time I became Rector of St. Gregory's, I knew I couldn't survive spiritually without that sort of liturgy, and I also felt confident that it would help revitalize the parish. Twenty-one years later, the Nine O'Clock Service is still the engine of growth in the parish, with its joyful expression of worship and our intentional efforts to recognize and welcome visitors.

As I began to hear about, and then read about and overhear Emerging Church conversations, I realized my own thirst to "go a little deeper, addressing the need to be relevant to culture and to contextualize [my] ministry [and St. Gregory's ministry] in today's world." My Sabbatical experiences reinforced that thirst, and working through Brian's book is my current effort to appropriate the insights of the Emerging Church movement in order to apply them locally.

Would any of you like to offer your own answer to the question, "What's wrong with us?" Or, would any of you like to offer your answer to another valuable question: "What's right with us?" Please offer your Comments below.

Musing on McLaren's emc: Justice and Reconciliation

This is the fifth in a periodic series of reflections on Brian D. McLaren's everything must change. Quotations used by kind permission of the author, with page citations from the edition featured on the Emerging Church Reading List to your right.

". . . religion, even the religion we are committed to and in which we have found God and purpose and meaning and truth, can become captive to a colossal distortion. It can become a benign and passive chaplaincy to a failing and dysfunctional culture, the religious public relations department for an inadequate and destructive ideology. It can forego being a force of liberation and transformation and instead become a source of domestication, resignation, pacification, and distraction. . . .

". . . in Rwanda and Burundi, young Christian leaders are beginning to tell the truth about their history and the failure of Christian missionaries to preach a gospel that called for justice and reconciliation among tribes" (p. 29).

These words are especially powerful after seeing Invictus, the story of Nelson Mandela's successful bid to have South Africa's soccer team become an instrument of national reconciliation.

Spoiler alert. In one of the movie's most powerful scenes, Mandela tells his black South African head of security that he must work with the white South African security detachment that undoubtedly had participated in supporting the apartheid regime and putting down anti-apartheid demonstrations. In so many words, Mandela tells him, "Forgiveness and reconciliation begins here and now." 

Invictus

Just back from Ingrid's and my nearly every-Thursday movie date, and this time we saw the movie Invictus, named for the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). This poem inspired Nelson Mandela during his twenty-seven years as an anti-apartheid political prisoner from 1964 to 1990.

Here is the text found at bartleby.com: 

OUT of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Reading Spiritually

"Read spiritual things in short 'doses.' Think over what you read. Try to apply it to your own life. Many people take a spiritual book, wade through it, and announce proudly, 'It didn't do me a bit of good.' Of course it didn't. They gave themselves spiritual indigestion. They tried too much. They read alone and not WITH GOD. There are things to learn about religion."

My first mentor, Father William O. Hanner, was the Rector of the Church of the Holy Comforter when I was growing up in Kenilworth in the 1960s, and he wrote these words for the McHenry Plaindealer on December 13, 1973.

Parish Newsletter

 

Dearly Beloved,

Special Appeal for hands-on help with the Christ Church, Waukegan, Community Meals (Soup Kitchen) Program this Sunday.

Please sign up or call the Parish Office if you can lend your hands to St. Gregory's team, or call Bill or Janet Foltz or Barbara Schaper, our Community Meals directors.

Missions Board

I am delighted to announce the appointments of the new Missions Boards Team leaders for two-year renewable terms:

Jeff Singleton and Leigh Stewart will lead the Diocesan and Episcopal Charities Team. Leigh is the Director of Development for the Cathedral Counseling Center, which is one of the agencies of Episcopal Charities and Community Services [ECCS] and Jeff serves on the Board of ECCS and also as the Executive Vice-President on the Board of Trustees for Lawrence Hall Youth Services, another ECCS agency.

Butler Sharpe and Shirley Traettino will lead the Parish and Local Team. Shirley started our Career Renewal collaboration with Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, and served on the Board of Directors for Interfaith Housing. Beginning in the New Year, Shirley will tutor children in the Waukegan 2 College program, one of the newest initiatives of ECCS. Butler draws on his forty years of service in law enforcement as a Board Member of St. Leonard's House (the oldest residential program for ex-offenders in the State of Illinois, and part of the ECCS family) and also of the Salvation Army, Correctional Division. Butler and Shirley were founding members of the original Missions Board, and are active in Lake County United.

Jon Dutcher and Sarah Snyder will lead the National and International Team. Sarah is the most recent member of the Missions Board, having served from the mid-1990s until 2007, and as President for her last five years. Sarah has also traveled extensively, including Botswana, China, Costa Rica, Israel, Jordan, Malaysia, South Africa, and Thailand. In addition, she volunteers for the Hewitt Foundation which raised $179,000 last year for nine charities. Jon Dutcher is the engineering director for the Abbott Fund, a non-profit organization operating projects in Tanzania and Lake County. A veteran himself, Jon will soon add mentoring returning veterans to his volunteer portfolio.

The inaugural meeting of the new Missions Board will be Sunday, January 10, at 1:30 pm. If you are serving on the board or as an employee of a social services agency, please let us know so we can support your ministry there, and consider becoming an active member of one of the Teams.

Mission and Vision Discernment

For the next several Newsletters I will be summarizing the work we have done as a congregation over the past two years to discern (prayerfully consider) our Mission and Vision.

In conjunction with our Giving Campaign two years ago, LoriLee Bielski facilitated a "Visioning our Future" exercise. The results of her much smaller sample of 21 parishioners anticipated many of the findings from last spring's parish-wide Congregation Assessment Tool, which we took as part of our Parish Sabbatical work. Here is the first question from LoriLee's exercise, and the top three responses:

1. What kind of programs do you see St. Gregory's offering in 5 years?

a. Continue, grow, and strengthen youth programs

b. Continue and grow community involvement programs

c. Improve facilities through a building program that allows us to support more activities

2. What will the community be saying about St. Gregory's in 5 years?

a. A "happening place" (Youth, Vacation Bible School, Boy Scouts, Pumpkin Patch, Preschool, Youth Coffee House)

b. Help the less fortunate (Christmas baskets, 12-step groups, Missions Board)

c. Dynamic, spirit-filled worship

d. Compassionate place for all

e. Available to all

More from LoriLee's "Visioning our Future" exercise in the next Newsletter.

Faithfully yours,

PLEASE BRING YOUR PLEDGE CARDS TO CHURCH THIS SUNDAY or mail them to the Parish Office.

PLEASE COME TO THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT THIS SUNDAY between the Nine and 11 am Services.

The children are scheduled for a rehearsal on Saturday, December 19th, beginning at 9:00 a.m. for all the speaking parts. The shepherds and sheep are welcome to come at 9:30 a.m. to rehearse the entire pageant. Costumes will be available in Atrium 1 on Sunday, December 13th, for those children who would like to select their costumes and make any adjustments to them prior to December 20th. Any questions, please contact Sharon Henley-Gramer at slgramer@comcast.net.

PLEASE SPONSOR A TUBA PLAYER! or A TROMBONIST! or A FRENCH HORN PLAYER!

Many thanks to all those who have already contributed to the Special Christmas Music memorials and thanksgivings. Each of our instrumentalists earns $300 on Christmas Eve, and so far we have collectively sponsored two trumpeters and half a tuba player! Would anyone like to sponsor the French Horn Player? the Trombonist? or the other half of the Tuba Player?

CHRISTMAS FLOWERS AND MUSIC

Sunday, December 20th, is the last day to make donations for Christmas Flowers and Music. Sign-up sheets are available on the table outside the Parish Office.

AN INVITATION TO MIQRA!

The Diocese of Chicago is inviting everyone to gather at St. James Cathedral for a day of worship and conversation about the Bible and our life as Episcopalians as we live out the good news in Chicago. Date: Saturday, January 16, 2010; Time: 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Canon Vicki Garvey will deliver the keynote. Lunch is provided with advance registration and a donation of $10.00. More information can be found at www.miqrachicago.org or email Ben Varnum at miqrachicago@gmail.com.

ST.GREGORY'S BOOK CLUB

St. Gregory's Book Club will meet on January 14th, at 7:30 p.m. in the Youth Room. Our selection is The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans. It's the touching story of a widow and the young family who moves in with her. Together they discover the first gift of Christmas and learn what Christmas is really all about. This is a Christmas story unlike any other. It is a quick read. We hope you will join us. (Our next selection will be The Help by Kathryn Stockett; watch for the date!)

MANY THANKS TO THOSE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE KNITWEAR SALE. WE RAISED $477.50 FOR THE TROOP SUPPORT MINISTRY. APPRECIATIVELY, LIN & RUTH REICHENBACH

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR A GOOD TIME!

Our plan is, as we have for the past several years, to do most of the Greening on Saturday, December 19th. We will finish up a few details (the large wreaths behind the altar and the crèche) on Sunday, December 20th after the 11:00 a.m. service.

TO ACOLYTES FROM BARB SCHAPER:

Please sign up for January and February 2010. I will be completing the schedule on December 20th.

MITTEN TREE

The Mitten Tree is up in Founder's Hall ready to accept donations of warm gloves, mittens, scarves, and caps/ear warmers! The tree will stay up through Epiphany at which time the items will be sent to one or more organizations who serve those in need. The items donated should be new and can be for any age. Donations may be brought by any time the Hall is open.

PARISH OFFICE DEADLINES

Newsletter announcements: Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.; Bulletin announcements: Thursday, 1:00 p.m.; office@stgregoryschurch.org

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In your prayers this week, please remember our companion parish in Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, and its leaders, Deacon Donné and Evangelist Tomboasy; the sick, particularly Jim Slattery, Fran Ingram, Dan, Jane, Thelma Dimmidt, Bonnie Travis, David Murray, Don Ten Eyck, Creshon Corbin, Anna Lively, Jan Alexandra, Celia Foltz, and Irene Besthoff; and the men and women serving in our armed forces and their families, especially Mark Kraus, Ilan Keldar, Justin Cloe, Alex Koltanowski, Richard Hayward, Robb Dunlap, Greg Hirsch, Jamie Mitchell, Chad Field, Brian Adamson, Hunter Levine, Owen Leewis, Daniel Fitzpatrick, and Cary Clark.

Christmas Letters Past

Each year I write a Christmas Letter to the Parish, a small essay inspired by a verse or a picture. While wondering what to offer this year I came across my file of Christmas Letters Past. This is from 2002:

 

“A King who has founded a house or city, far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of its inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having more regard to his own honor than to the people’s neglect. Much more then, the God who was the Word of the all-good Father was not unmindful of the human race he had made to exist.”

 

“This indeed was why the Word of God came into our territory. He certainly didn’t come because he was previously far away, since not a single part of the creation had ever been left empty of him who fills all things that are. But now he is present to us, stooping to our level by his love and self-revealing toward us.”

 

St. Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, from a.d. 328 until his death in 373, wrote these words, words that meet us in our own day and circumstances.

 

Sometimes God does indeed seem far away. Sometimes God seems far away when we are assaulted by one personal tragedy after another in a seemingly endless procession. Sometimes God seems far away when an outcome for which we have earnestly striven slips through our fingers. Sometimes God seems far away when we look upon the many horrors wreaked by human hate and violence.

 

But Athanasius encourages us with the assurance that not a single part of creation, not a single part of our experience, has ever been left empty of the King who fills all things that are—  he fills our tragedies, he fills our disappointments, he fills the world’s pain.

 

And so we may know that the King fills all things— not just the happy things, not just the successful things, not just the holy things, but all things— now, now, he is present to us in the Word who fills our flesh, the Word who fills our empty hearts with his stooping love, the Word who fills our broken lives by revealing his own cross-broken body.

 

Now he is present to us— in the instant of our prayer, in the moment of our cry, and in the sudden inspiration of our praise.

George Herbert, English priest and poet, 1593-1633:

"Nothing is little in God's service."

Rector's Refectorial Repast 2009

The Fourth Annual St. Gregory's Episcopal Preschool Auction's winning bidder for dinner at the Rectory, Jim Collins, arrived with his partner Mike Miller and guests Tina and Jim Bach (Jim's and Mike's landlords!) for this year's gourmet dinner by Chef Ingrid.

Mike puts herb-marinated goat cheese on toast points, before adding some duck rillettes to his plate. On the table behind him a glass holds St. Germain liqueur made from elder flowers topped with rosé champagne.

 

Mike and Jim enjoy the hors d'ouevres, and so do Jim and Tina.

Then on to the dining room for the second course, where Jim enjoys the tomato bisque with curried croutons.

Followed by filet mignon cooked to order (rare or medium) and Scandinavian sugar-browned potatoes . . .

A winter salad of radicchio, watercress, Boston lettuce, and Belgian endive, with crostini and grilled shallot vinaigrette.

And the feast concluded with chocolate mousse cake topped by cinnamon cream. (Sorry, not much of it is left!)

Maybe you can bid successfully on the Rector's Refectorial Repast next year!

Troop Support Sunday

This past Sunday, December 6 (the feast day of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, and the real Santa Claus-- "yes, Virginian, there really IS a Santa Claus!"), St. Gregory's held its first Sunday morning Troop Support Ministry Care Package Assembly.

Here's a panoramic view of the crowded and busy Founders Hall (thanks to official photographer Jeff Singleton, whose pictures grace this post):

(At the far left, people are gathered at Lin Reichenbach's table. Although she is out of sight, Lin and her daughter Ruth are selling handknit mittens, scarves, and headbands, and donating her proceeds to the Troop Care Package ministry. In fact, the headbands were donated by Lin or purchased in order to include them in the Care Packages. (Other knitted garments are headed for our Mitten Tree, whence they will find their way to some of Chicago's boys and girls.)

As things get under way, Cissy Singleton and Nuala Kurokawa, who conceived and continue to lead the Troop Support Ministry, pose in front of some of the first tables laden with soldier-bound goods:

 

At the far right Cissy climbs aboard a chair to instruct the civilian troops for the task ahead:

Here we find two volunteers working at speed to fill as many boxes as possible for our military troops in Iraq and Afghanistan:

 

Sunday's volunteers included the Girls' Eighth Grade Basketball Team from Shepard Middle School, and their Eighth Grade teachers, Mssrs. Komie and Hyde. This day's effort is the culmination of their Eighth Grade Veterans' Day Project, but they have been helping the Troop Support Ministry for several years now. We also had volunteers from the students and teachers of a Sixth Grade CCD Class from Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church in Deerfield.

An essential feature of our Care Packages is the personal letter from the packer to the soldier who will receive the package.

 

The packing is in full swing . . .

 

. . . and at the end of the morning, over 140 Care Packages flank Nuala and Cissy (with Lin's table providing a touch of color on the right):

 

Once again an ecumenical and intergenerational gathering, including some whose loved ones are in the midst of serving overseas, has taken the time and effort to thank and encourage the women and men who find themselves in harm's way.

Musing on McLaren's emc: "I could not not go."

This is the fourth in a periodic series of reflections on Brian D. McLaren's everything must change. Quotations used by kind permission of the author, with page citations from the edition featured on the Emerging Church Reading List to your right.

"Claude [Nikondeha] extended an invitation to me: 'Brian, would you be willing to come to Burundi and meet with about fifty young leaders I know from the region? I would like to expose them to your thinking. I think it would help us.' I gave him a firm 'I'll think about it' and told him that if I came, I didn't want to simply speak or teach. I wanted to come to listen, to learn, to try to understand what life was like for these people whom now, through Claude, I was beginning to feel somehow connected to.

"Before I gave him my final answer, I went on the Internet and did some research. The US State Department strongly urged Americans not to visit Burundi because it had been torn by civil war. . . .

"In some ways, I could not not go on this trip. As a follower of Jesus, and as a pastor for over two decades, I knew that in the Bible God shows a special concern for the poor, the vulnerable, the forgotten, the oppressed. I knew that Jesus said, 'Whatever you did for one of the least of these . . . you did for me" (Matthew 25:40)."

Todd and Patsy McGregor have been extending an invitation to Ingrid and me almost from the first time we had lunch together nearly twenty years ago, when they were new lay missionaries to Madagascar, and had just spent Sunday morning preaching and teaching at St. Gregory's about their work. We had given them a firm "We'll think about it" each return visit since then, while they raised their two daughters, Corbi and Charese, were ordained as priests, expanded their work into Kenya, and then returned to Madagascar when Todd was elected to be a missionary bishop of a new missionary diocese.

Three years ago, as my Sabbatical was approaching, Patsy and Todd visited St. Gregory's once again, and at lunch they renewed their invitation. We were a bit firmer this time, but there was a caveat: "We will, if we can find the money." That was a large caveat, of course. A year later, the Lilly Endowment accepted our application for their Clergy Renewal Program, and their generous grant took care of the money excuse! 

Like Brian, we too consulted the Internet. Madagascar has not undergone the wrenching civil war that Burundi has, but as we were planning our trip there was a political coup, Madagascar was beset by lawlessness and unrest, and the US State Department cautioned against traveling there.

And yet, like Brian, Ingrid and I could not not go. And also like Brian, we didn't want to go just to teach or preach; we wanted and hoped to form lasting relationships with the people in one of Todd's new Malagasy church plants. (Our desires were more than realized, and you can read about our new companion parish in my series of posts under Categories and titled "Sabbaticalog Madagascar.")

Now you know why, in my first post on Brian MacLaren's Everything Must Change, I wrote "Not many pages into his book I realized that Brian McLaren and I share one kind of life experience: an intense, exhilarating and . . ."

. . . transforming sojourn in one of the poorest and most wondrous countries on earth, among people of extraordinary kindness and generosity and faith. And resilience.

Thanks be to God.