To All The Saints In The Making … It’s Not YOUR Birthday!
December 2, 2011
What do we do on a birthday? We honor the honoree! Balloons, gifts, and by all means – cake! (I accept pies, btw) Since I was a child (yes, awhile ago), something has changed. I still see children giving gifts to a birthday girl/boy, but then they come home with all kinds of stuff – bags full! Is the term “party favors” still in use? So it looks like a pretty even trade. Throw in a pony ride and a roll of quarters for the arcade, and the guests make out better than he/she whose birthday it is – and their Mom and Dad don’t have to clean up. Words like “loot” and “plunder” fall to hand…
Trade out our birthday boy- or girl-child for the baby Jesus, and we’ve pretty much got the standard celebration of Christmas. Jesus, whom we honor, is in there somewhere. But it’s the rest of us that make out like bandits, with our own “haul” of said loot. Come on now, don’t we?
Not long ago, I referenced Michael Slaughter’s phrase, “It’s not your birthday!” That needs it’s exclamation point, as in Hey! People! Listen up! As people of faith, we’re called to a better way – right?
This season, unique for me, has me taking the stock about a number of things. One is what has become the answer to an oft-asked question: “What is it about Fairmont that has kept you there?” Quite simply: we give ourselves away. Jesus’ birthday is one of the key moments for that.
Elsewhere in this Focus you can read about the Robeson County Church & Community Center Christmas Store, thirteen White Christmas families and an adopted family (our partner: Wake Interfaith Hospitality Network), and a dinner hosted on, at all times, Christmas Eve. Ah, but this is a community of faith that simply cannot wait for Christmas to give itself away!
In 2011, we furnished an apartment for that family in transition, “adopting” them as our special charges. That process is still underway as they have now moved in. We not only “eat well and do good” here, but meals are shared with folks “going through.” Our trustees did a significant upgrade to a meeting space used 95% by outside groups, with another slated for the coming weeks. Early 2012 will see us establishing our “labyrinth,” a way not only for us to pray but to invite to prayer the community around us.
Did you know… six years ago this month, Stop Hunger Now had the first “meal packaging” event. We were there in good numbers, and have been ever since. It was not I who coined the term, but in a real sense, Fairmont served as the “incubator” for that young organization that now has packaged over 56 million meals – and plans 25 million more for 2012.
How else will we give ourselves away? After all, it’s HIS birthday!
Pastor Steve
To All the Saints in the Making…Consecrate
October 28, 2011
Could there be a more important sounding day than “Christ the King?” For the day that culminates the entire church year, it may get little more than a quick glance at the worship bulletin and a “Hmm, Christ the King… Ok.” I don’t remember it being mentioned in my childhood, it was those seminary-types (!) that brought it to my attention.
As you might guess, I looked it up. Alas, instead of confirming my vast knowledge, I learned how much I did not know. I found that Pope Pius XI instituted the day in 1925. Why? Rising secularism questioned the authority of Christ and the church—sound familiar, 21st century folk? Then as now, a parallel rise in individualism (singing, “I did it my way!”) challenged the authority of not just the church but of institutions in general.
So can “Christ the King” work in 2011? We’re a little suspicious of kings these days…we are fascinated by royalty, but more from the vantage point of spectators. I like to think it can work if we’ll work it. The “church year” has moved us from Advent through Christmas and Epiphany, from Lent through Easter and Pentecost—the two great “cycles” of each year. It seems fitting that the one we name king at his birth be claimed as king beyond the manger.
The celebration comes just as we also mark our Consecration Sunday. Yes, that confluence is deliberate. Unless you just came in, you know that’s the day we receive well-prayed-over commitments (estimates of giving) for the next year. What does it mean to “consecrate” something? Something is set apart as holy, sacred; something is dedicated to a specific purpose. So when we ask God to bless us as we consecrate “the elements” of holy communion, it is a very big deal!
When we prayerfully estimate our giving, we do so in that spirit of consecration: we name all that we have as a gift from God, setting apart a portion of it, to use biblical language, to “make it holy unto the Lord.” That is a very big deal!
Is there anything that can be allowed to get in the way of such “consecration?” And is there any place on the economic spectrum where we are not under this kingship, this lordship of Christ?
Lately we heard Jesus say to his critics, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”* In my home church, we did not use the usual Old 100th doxology, but sang this:
We give thee but thine own,
Whate’er the gift may be,
All that we have is thine alone,
A trust, O Lord, from thee.
On Christ the King Sunday, we will set apart a portion of God’s trust in us, asking God’s blessing upon our actions together. It will be “holy unto the Lord.”
Pastor Steve
* Matthew 22:21
To All The Saints In The Making… Charge!
September 30, 2011
I love baseball. It doesn’t matter who is playing – I’ve been known to stop the car to watch little leaguers chasing around the sand lot. At minor league games, I’ve noticed that there are two times when one hears the trumpet sound and the cheer goes up – da da da dat dada! Charge! (Try that in your spell checker!) The first is when things are getting kind of slow, the second is when things are getting really exciting.
Our very own “charge conference” offers us a bit of both. With a nod to the centuries old system of meeting as a “pastoral charge,” we also catch the excitement of what’s afoot. I nearly get lost in the paperwork, but come up for air in time to look around and say – look at what God is doing!
This year I’ll report that we boldly set out for a place we had not gone before, to “become a praying congregation.” Yes, we prayed at home, yes, we prayed at church. But then we imagined what could happen in a life of prayer. What began as a single strategy has now developed into five significant aspects.
- In the spring, fourteen of us met for several weeks, using Bishop Reuben Job’s book, When You Pray.
- In August, we set aside four weeks of morning worship to work out a biblical framework for a life of prayer.
- During that time, we began to distribute more widely the books, When You Pray. With the study group, a women’s retreat, morning worship and Sunday Night LIVE!, we have about 80 of those books in use – daily, I’m sure!
- In September, we began a 10-week DISCIPLE Bible Study of “The Psalms,” which are also known as “the church’s prayer book.” The group has nineteen members.
- The trustees have worked to establish a “labyrinth,” which will provide a beautiful outdoor setting for prayer. It will have the additional benefit of the church “offering” that to the community around us.
My annual reportings have been filled with the remarkable variety of missional outreaches, musical offerings, diverse worship settings, and initiatives of many sorts. In a whole lot of ways, Fairmont continues to “give ourselves away.” No? Consider the seven week project to renovate “The Upper Room” – used mostly by people recovering from addictions. The paint, carpet, window treatments, tables and chairs all add greatly to the warmth of our welcome.
Fall always has us “charging” ahead, full speed. Just around the corner is our annual campaign (Money Matters!), the Bazaar, a “month of Sundays” (see front page), All Saints Day, Thanksgiving, and all Advent holds – including our young people offering, “Dude, You Hear What I Hear?” Our choir… you know, I better save a little for November’s Focus!
‘Til then: da da da dat dada! Charge!
Pastor Steve
To All the Saints in the Making…Ten Years Later
September 2, 2011
The “rollout” for the 9/11 anniversary is well begun. Since those now legendary attacks, this is the first time that September 11 has fallen on a Sunday. If we’re old enough, we all seem to remember where we were on that day, a Tuesday. But do you remember where you were on the Sunday after Tuesday? A whole lot of us went to church. In fact, attendance soared for three Sundays, then settled down to normal.
Will Willimon (now bishop in North Alabama) assembled a helpful volume called “The Sunday After Tuesday.” At the time, he was minister to the university at Duke. His interest was in what campus ministers from around the country had to say on that day. They had a lot to say – as did most of us. A mere five days after the fact, with preparation begun with the Twin Towers’ smoke a-billowing, they reflect an incredible range of emotion, and no less remarkable a range of faithfulness. There was a sprinkling of “wrath of God” revenge thinking, but by and large the mood was one of stunned reflection, and a call to becoming the blessed peacemakers of which Jesus spoke (Beatitudes, Matthew 5:9).
What did I say? I’m not too sure what I said ten days ago, let alone ten years – but I am going to my personal archive to find out. I do remember that we joined many in reading Psalm 46:
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains should shake in the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble in the midst of its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved.
God will help it when the morning dawns. (Ps 46:1-5)
Believe it or not, that brings me to the Fairmont Gospel Revue. Some time ago, we began to perform “Stand By Me,”* and in the midst of it, pause to read from Psalm 46.
I invite you to go to your favorite search engine to view “Playing Song Around the World, Stand By Me.” I’ve gone back to it again and again, and just reposted it on my Facebook page. What an image for “peacemaking.” Musicians from around the world collaborated on a single performance of Stand By Me.
Admittedly, the FGR has “tweaked” the lyrics – it’s what we do. In the midst of the destruction lo, those ten years ago, what better prayer than
“Stand by me, O God, my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Pastor Steve
* Performed by Ben E King, written by him, Jerry Leiber, and Mike Stoller.
To All the Saints in the Making…Pray 'em if you got 'em!
July 29, 2011
I spent way too many Saturday afternoons watching black and white movies, many of them were war movies. When the going got tough, some wizened old sergeant would inevitably say, “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.” As I grew older and more wizened (!), it made a whole lot more sense in that foxhole and besieged situation to say, “Pray ‘em if you got ‘em.” Ah, but for many of us, that might be the sum total of our prayer life. We only pray ‘em when we’re under fire!
For a number of months, we’ve taken some baby steps toward “Becoming a Praying Congregation.” At first glance, we might say, well of course we are. But the strategy I propose is to learn do better what we do well, to learn to do well what we do not so well, and to jump start what we aren’t doing at all. All of us are somewhere in that continuum.
Larger strides will be taken as we devote August’s morning worship services to this theme. Texts like Matthew 5:43-48, 6:7-15, 7:7-11, and 26:36-46, from the Sermon on the Mount to the Passion of Christ will guide us on our way. Our hymns and our worship prayers will all call us to the larger theme: prayer.
As mentioned on the front page of the August Focus (you did read the front page…), we will begin using widely a resource called, When You Pray, Daily Practices for Prayerful Living, by Bishop Reuben Job (now retired). Bishop Job has given the Church wonderful leadership, his gentle spirit shining through this anthology. He has assembled a veritable constellation of authors whose brief readings will move us day by day. We will take time to learn how to use the resource, which can be used for three or more years. About fifteen to twenty of the books are already in use by our pilot group as well as by members of the Susannah Wesley Circle, introducing it on retreat.
What would it mean, what could it mean if the bulk of our congregation was thinking daily on the same scripture texts, reflecting on these writings, and praying together for our nation and world, the church, the people in our lives, and for ourselves?
This will be a different kind of worship series for us, I’m really looking forward to it. Recognizing that a few of you might miss one or more of the Sundays, I will try to offer a manuscript on the Mondays following these Sundays, which will approximate each meditation. Let me know.
Thanks be to God that we do “have a prayer!” May we work through this season of prayer together, trusting God for the outcome!
Pastor Steve
PS – We’ll invite $10 for the cost of your book, however, we do not want to prevent anyone from having one. Consider adding a “scholarship” to your $10, that everyone may have one!
To All the Saints…Taking Names?
July 1, 2011
In the June 26, 2011 worship bulletin, I shared the three “drivers” or measurements our NC Conference will be using to characterize the vitality of the church: worship attendance, professions of faith, and missional giving. I promised to carry it a step further, and with this writing, I do so. Each of the three will merit more reflection. Today: attendance.
When first we began to “take attendance” lo, these many years ago, using the pew pads, there was some concern expressed that a record of one’s attendance would be recorded. Horrors! No, we reassured each questioner, it is a way to both introduce yourself to the guests and members nearby and a way to gain information about those newcomers, that we might reach out to them. After all, who would undergo the tedious task of recording each person’s presence week by week?
But now I wonder…would that not be a way to establish a pattern? To notice when someone had moved past “two weeks’ vacation” to a third and more, establishing a new pattern, not of presence, but absence? I sense a discomfort in the house! Before we raise a cry of “big-brotherism,” think with me about where we are.
Week by week, our attendance at the two services is recorded in the bulletin. Until this year, I had only “run the numbers” for the year end report required by the conference. But because this is deemed a key measurement, we are now asked to look at the numbers each quarter. For 2010, our average held with 2009, with 168 at both services (124/44). In the first quarter of 2011, it was 164. In the second quarter of 2012, it was 145, with morning worship averaging 105–and this quarter included Palm Sunday and Easter! Yes, and Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Memorial Day. But here’s what startled me–our morning worship has not broken 100 for the last seven weeks!
Week by week, we welcome five to ten or more guests–did you know that? Most of them are here for the first time. We hope they receive a rousing message of welcome. But as they spend their time in worship, they also receive a message of…what? Emptiness? Absence? A church on its way out? They may not know that the main floor seats over 250, but they can perceive 150-175 empty places. What is their takeaway?
Our narrative as a church has our “love of God” followed by “joyful worship,” and then our sense of peace and social justice, diversity, and Christ-like compassion. Joyful worship–is it falling on hard times?
I’ve learned that more is not a goal, so I won’t say come to worship more. I will say, take a look at your weekends, your Sundays, and where you spend the hours. Can you move once or twice a month worship attendance to two or three? From three to Four? Or does worship matter to you all that much?
Pastor Steve
To All The Saints in the Making…Annual Conference!
June 3, 2011
If you just came in, Annual Conference is one of those distinctly “Methodist” things. Since long before becoming “United” Methodists (1968), our movement has been marked by such an annual gathering. That has two meanings: we both “confer” annually and our area (eastern NC) is called an “annual conference.” It is hoped that our conferring will be holy, linking us to John Wesley’s notion of “holy conferencing.” Wesley counted such “conferencing” as a means of grace by which the way for the Holy Spirit is opened among us.
For the first time in my memory, Annual Conference will be held in Raleigh. The site in Greenville used in recent years had another booking (a better offer?!), so “we” shopped around and got a good deal with the Raleigh Convention Center.
Did you know…our lay delegates are Margaret Fuller and Gene Lowrimore? Our alternates are Jean Porter and Henry Jarrett. In addition, all clergy are members of the annual conference (Kirk Oldham, Reggie Ponder, me.)
Preaching at the conference will be our own Bishop Hope Morgan Ward, serving in the Mississippi Annual Conference for a 7th year. Times in worship are always a conference highlight, and because of her, hold unusual promise.
There’s always lots of business. After two years of work, a committee on the superintendency will offer a report that recommends that district superintendents operate in a different way– more leanly (with 8 instead of 12) and more efficiently (using administrative assistants). Should that be well-received, the twelve districts will be reconfigured into eight next year.
Every four years we elect delegates to jurisdictional and general conferences. I have been privileged to serve on the jurisdictional (nine southeastern states) level since 2000, casting votes to elect the bishops. This year, voting will be done electronically on what looks like a universal remote–who knows what will happen? Channels may change, garage doors may fly open across the city–we shall see.
New clergy will be ordained, the budget will be roundly discussed and acted upon, resolutions will be dissected and disposed, the departed clergy and spouses will be honorably uplifted. These are all the things that happen when the United Methodist family gathers in “annual conference.”
Chief on my mind, of course, is the “fixing of appointments,” usually the last order of business before adjournment. As things stand now, I will be back here at Fairmont to sojourn one more. I anticipate that return with great joy, humbled to have served among a people so impassioned for ministry, so equipped for mission, so empowering to one and all to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ. It is my hope that we will go deeper, wider, and higher than ever before. Pray with me? May God work through us to accomplish holy purposes, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Pastor Steve
To All the Saints….Pray On
April 29, 2011
Do you recognize this one-sided conversation?
Me: High Five!
Someone? Anyone? No one??)
Me: Don’t leave me hanging!
Okay, maybe you’re not a “high-fiver.” Since the publication of the February Focus, I’m sure you’ve eagerly awaited the report on “Becoming a Praying Congregation,” and I do not want to leave you hanging! As you can read in your loose leaf notebook of past Fairmont Foci (What? You don’t have one?!), I invited people to come together around that theme for the season of Lent. Fourteen have done so, and together, we present the seeds of how to become more of a praying congregation. Why? Prayer is basic. If we work to perfect the basics, much more will follow.
The first area is the simplest: make sure everything in our church’s life is prayerful–awash in prayer, soaked in it! Whether it is missional work, administrative meetings, or sharing foodstuffs, we call for each action, each decision, each item that changes has to be touched first with prayer. Does that make sense? The church council has begun to live into this model already, we look forward to the ways others will do so as well. One important suggestion is for each Sunday School class to name every absent class member in prayer week by week.
A second area is the creation of prayer groups. We have studied a range of possibilities, including those focusing on Discussion, Activity, Introspection, Arts, and Habit Breakers (our group preferred “Habit Builders!”). There is a wonderful array of approaches to each of those focal points. Among them is the notion of “prayer shawls,” made in groups who pray together for the person who will receive it–a powerful symbol of loving support. Writers among us may be drawn to journaling or devotional writing, and we are beginning plans to invite a speaker to help us focus that effort. Those in the arts may be drawn together around art pieces, music, or the creation of art.
A third area is in our worship. While we include congregational prayer and “prayers of the people,” we have not often made space for listening. One exception is in the communion liturgy, where the prayer of confession is followed by silent confession. What might it mean to mean to add some silence? For some, that can be discomfiting–makes us look at our watches! It is an area worth exploring.
There are ideas circulating that are “what ifs?” What if each card we send had been prayed over? What if each craft group creation for the Bazaar was also touched by prayer for its recipient? What if we include “our guests” in Sunday’s prayer? What if we, when packaging meals for Stop Hunger Now, surround the filled boxes and “lay hands” on them, praying for people who will be fed?
I feel that this is a crucial moment in our life. Do you sense it, too?
Pastor Steve
How Holy the Week?
March 30, 2011
As Holy Week approaches, I’m reflecting on John Wesley’s concept of “scriptural holiness.” Big on grace, Wesley understood that holiness to be living the convictions gained from scripture. He named that “sanctification.” If we recognize the same word root as “saint,” it makes sense to say we are being saint-ified, as in, sanctified. ‘Tis a life long process, which is Wesley names “going on to perfection”–nothing like raising the bar, is there?
Believe it or not, expect it or not, we are growing in scriptural holiness, we are being sanctified. I’ve been sifting through the recent days, and will wonder “aloud” to consider if Lent can intensify, or has intensified, that growth. To go all King James, “What hath Lent wrought?”
In terms we’re using in our Lenten conversations, an “act of piety” is our prayer study, one which will spill over on the whole congregation. In an “act of mercy,” we are renovating space where far more “non-church” folk will be than Fairmont folk. Acts of piety and mercy are Wesleyan “means of grace.”
Missionally, this Focus “runneth over,” from preparations for our summer work team (Louisiana) to the Race of Grace, from the Methodist Home for Children to our Parents Morning Out. We are advocating for people with mental illnesses with the NAMI Walk, Friends Supporting Friends (see March Focus), and the Faith Connections & Mental Illness event in Chapel Hill. We are beginning to respond to the overwhelmingly painful experience of the Japanese people, thousands of miles and worlds away from us. Our neighbors have firewood and food and household supplies because of our growing in grace.
Think of this: our youth, in lovingly tending these church grounds, are exercising “creation care.” Think also of this: our Confirmation Six are meeting faithfully week by week to examine their faith and grow in grace?
Could there be more “passionate worship” than this past Sunday? Some are all a-tremble at the very thought of placing worship in the hands of the young. Ah, but they led us well, exceptionally well, with the riveting message of “Let’s Rock!” The Christian life is not a solo act…we are the body of Christ. Singing and dancing, right here in church! All for the Lord, Amen!
Now an outside group wants to come inside to join with us, meeting our joy both in glorious music and in significant mission. The Raleigh Flute Choir asked to have their annual benefit concert here, all for Stop Hunger Now (Thursday, April 14, 7:30 pm).
Yes, we’re moving toward Holy Week, but it has also been a Holy Lent. Gathering with palms’ praise procession, holy communion, the reading of Christ’s passion, the rising up early to celebrate Jesus’ own rising–all that contributes to our holiness, our sanctification.
May we join the joy…for he lives!
Pastor Steve
To All the Saints in the Making…Lent
March 4, 2011
Calendars–what’s the big deal? I don’t know about you, but I’d be lost without one, or more! The odd timing of Easter has me thinking about it so much so I’m commenting about it again. You want to have some fun, noodle around on the internet and look at some of the history of when Easter falls. Before AD 325, it wasn’t always even on a Sunday! The Council of Nicea meeting that year made the bold step of declaring, “Easter is on a Sunday!” although they probably said it in Latin. Just exactly which Sunday continued to vary in different parts of the world. We get that, as Orthodox Christians and Everybody-Else-Christians can’t agree about when Christmas falls either.
About AD 532, Dionyisius Exiguus stepped up and helped regularize Easter, but Aloisius Lilius messed things up in 1576 by following the Gregorian Calendar, which was decidedly unhelpful until Pope Pius XIII decreed in 1582, “Everyone shall use the Gregorian calendar and stop messing around with Easter” (that’s a paraphrase). (Source: Marcos J. Montes on smart.net)
Easter is now the first Sunday after the paschal full moon, which can shine from March 21 until April 18. Easter could be as late as the 25th, so the 24th is close.
On the front of the March Focus are the particulars of how we enter this season of Lent. Beginning together on Ash Wednesday is more than a “nice” tradition. Sharing a simple meal and then worshiping around the theme of sacrifice help set the tone for journeying through the days. It is significant that a small group will meet throughout Lent in order to offer our whole church a plan to become “A Praying Congregation.” It is also significant that our offering at mid-Lent will be for One Great Hour of Sharing, which positions the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) to respond to crises around the world…do you realize the magnitude of being part of that?
For the eighth year, we will gather in homes to deepen our spirits–and to deepen our friendships. Sign up sheets will circulate in worship. Our thinking will be framed by John Wesley’s thought about living lives of “scriptural holiness.” His insistence on a balance of “works of piety” and “works of mercy” is a marker of the people called Methodists and one of his most momentous contributions to our Christian movement. I look forward to the involvement of many who have been unable to participate before.
While I’m going on about calendars, we Protestants usually miss The Annunciation of Mary on March 25. Think about it–the angel Gabriel “announces” to her what will be, and she says “Let it be,” and nine months later, there “be” Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. Is it too confusing to say that’s the day we begin preparing for Christmas?
Pastor Steve