Faithfulness and Reconciliation

The title above links to a sermon preached yesterday by an Episcopal rector in Florida. A very sensitive response to a matter of deep concern and division within the Anglican communion. Check it out.

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Places to Dream

In his book, ReImagining Spiritual Formation, Doug Pagitt talks about questions and issues that arose in starting a new church called Solomon's Porch. He says:

After months of discussing the integrity of our intentions as a group, we realized that we started Solomon's Porch not because the pews in other churches were full, but because the places of dream making and leadership in other churches were full.

Curious how often it happens that the places of dream making in a church become full. Or perhaps they become restricted to only a few. It seems that one of the downsides of clearly articulating and pursuing a singular vision, is that all other dreams are thereby excluded.

The idea of creating a church where the entirety of the body are free to dream and to pursue those dreams seems at the same time both radical and wonderful. But perhaps that is exactly what God intends, after all does He not say through the prophet Joel

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

So I wonder why it is that we so easily become a people who stifle the dreams of others, and reserve the places of dream making only to the elite few. Or is that just the nature of institutions?

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We Value Evangelism

That was the title of the sermon this past Sunday, a message in a series devoted to seven Core Values originally articulated a few years ago.

My difficulty with such a statement is always that I'm not sure just what it means, what it actually communicates. While really just a simple idea of proclaiming or heralding the Good News, Evangelism often seems to mean something more programatic, more targetted, more results oriented when used by some people.

The results oriented, targetted, warfare type language that seems heavily correlated with talk of Evangelism has always left me a bit cold. No doubt it relates to my own personal exposure to Evangelists as a child and adolescent -- an exposure that nearly destroyed my faith in God in favour of a faith in religion.

Curiously enough, while still recalling the whole Core Values sermon series, I encountered an article by Spencer Burke entitled Swords Into Plowshares, which really resonates with me. Even though I don't garden, his gardening metaphor for evangelism seems so much more appropriate than the warrior metaphor.

Just when I start feeling all alone, God sends some part of the one holy catholic church to remind me that He still has many people in many places who hear His voice. Who knows, perhaps that feeling of aloneness is what God is nudging me to give up this year for Lent.

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