Recreation

As I drive to the church in the mornings these days, it feels like the campus of Carson-Newman is taking a long exhale from another completed school year.  When I stop by McDonald's for breakfast, the lines are less crowded with parents and teachers rushing to start the school day.  Summer break has arrived (or is arriving very soon) for many in our area, and with it the community as a whole has the opportunity to catch its breath.

With the completion of Youth Sunday and the conclusion of the To Be a Presbyterian class, my schedule has been less hectic this week, and I have enjoyed time to read, pray, and reflect, aspects of ministry that are quickly sacrificed when we fall prey to the American achievement model of vocation. 

Now summer, for those without children or who do now work in an educational setting, may be like much of the rest of the year, but even for those of us plugging away as usual, there are increased opportunities during the warmer weather and longer days to enjoy the outdoors, go out on the lake, or play a round of golf.

Summer is a time of recreation but can also be a time for re-creation.  I am reminded in this moment of pause how we are instructed in the Westminster Catechism to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever."  I believe we can enjoy God by enjoying the world God made.  This is different, of course, from manipulating the world to our desires regardless of the economic or ecological results, but I do believe God values and enjoys our play.  If God does not intend for us to enjoy life, then why does recreation and play seem to natural to us?

My encouragement to you this summer, then, is to play, to enjoy your life and enjoy God's world.  Find time to sit on your porch and count the lightning bugs.  Pack a cooler and spend the day on the lake, swimming and swapping stories.  Load up the family car and head to the mountains for a retreat, and break out the board games in the evening.  Work a puzzle, go to Dollywood, play basketball in the driveway with your kids even if it means neglecting to mow the lawn for another day.  Take your dog for a long walk.

In these moments of recreation we can again find our purpose and our joy in life.  We cultivate relationships, we make memories, we release negative experiences from our lives.  We follow the command of our Lord to enjoy God.  So enjoy God this summer, and experience re-creation!

(But don't forget we still have Sunday school and worship each week at 9:45 and 10:45, in addition to our Youth Mission Trip, Vacation Bible School, and our week to feed the Appalachian Outreach volunteers!)

Pentecost Offering 2

This is the second part of our two-part series on the PC(USA) Pentecost Offering.  We will collect it on Sunday, May 20 and Sunday, June 3 during worship.  Please consider contributing to this important offering.  This piece was written by one of my classmates at Columbia Theological Seminary, Lauren Slingerland.
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In the year I served as a Young Adult Volunteer in Belfast, Northern Ireland I came to treasure the words of St. Patrick, "He who gave his life for you, it is he who speaks within you." I started to hear God’s voice more intimately and see God’s face all around me as I witnessed God at work in reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

God changed my view and my heart forever, teaching me about simplicity, humility, authenticity and discipleship. I went to Belfast with 2 suitcases and lived on a stipend of about $200 a month. I learned about all the things I didn’t need in life and I lived in solidarity with my neighbors in the most impoverished area of North Belfast.

As a volunteer in the afterschool program, I learned to put aside my pride and my degree in education and make toast with humility so I could build relationships with my coworkers and the children. I served alongside people on both sides of the deep divide of the Troubles in Belfast, people seeking peace and healing with one another after deep hatred, pain, and loss.

I worked at Whitehouse Presbyterian Church, which sat on the divide of Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. The church had been destroyed in an arson attack just two years before and they rebuilt with a commitment to cross-community peacemaking efforts. For example, on Tuesdays I supported a lunch program for older adults from both communities, people who had been enemies for over 30 years were sitting at table together.

My other placement was a community center where I volunteered with the afterschool program and groups for youth and adults with disabilities. Often, people with disabilities would be targeted by paramilitary groups; they were vulnerable, easy to attack. Our group organized events for them to socialize safely, build relationships and life skills.

In these placements I saw the deep rifts that still exist in Belfast’s society and I saw how God was bringing people together to heal them. I was a stranger, but these communities welcomed me in and blessed me with the chance to join in on the good work they were doing. God changed my heart and my view, offering me a chance to see the world through the eyes of Christ who is re-creating and reconciling. He who gave his life for me grew new gifts and parts of me far more abundantly than I ever imagined. God is at work in the world in vibrant ways and invites us to be a partner in it in ways that will change us forever, shaping us as we respond to God’s loving invitation. He who gave his life for you, it is he who speaks within you.

Lauren Slingerland
Chaplain Resident, Harborview Medical Center
Seattle, WA

Our Lasting Image of God

Rebecca and I are just over two weeks away from the due date of our first child, and we have been overwhelmed by the generosity of First Presbyterian Church and other family and friends.  Our nursery went from being an empty room to having a crib, a changing table, a glider, many packages of diapers, a closet full of clothes, and drawers full of toys. 

The shelves, once bare, are now lined with quite a few children's books.  There are the classic Dr. Seuess stories, the Berenstein Bears, and a variety of nursery rhyme books.  There are stories we did not know but presume we will know very well in the years ahead.  Among the many books, we also received several children's story Bibles.

I have flipped through this story Bibles several times, examining the pictures, reading the words, whether in narrative form or verse, taking in the major stories of faith editors choose to include and puzzling over which ones they think we should wait until later to share with our children.

What an incredible opportunity and terrifying responsibility, that this child we bring into the world is depending on us to help him to grasp an understanding of God.  These stories in these children's Bibles, the songs and lullabies we sing at the bedside, the prayers we teach and say, and the way we model our own faith, will communicate to this child who God is.  Frankly, it's overwhelming to consider.

In his book Caring for God's People, Philip Culbterson explains how the psychological category of Object Relations Theory plays into our understanding of God.  In short, Object Relations Theory is based on the relationship between the infant and the parent and how over time the infant grows to become a child, an adolescent, and an adult, moving from a focus on a relationship with one object (mother and father) to more objects to which the person attaches value.  The objects, over time, come to represent the person, memory, place, or particular memory.  If you have ever cleaned out a parent's home, you most likely have experienced "object relations" as you try to figure out what you can throw away and what to keep.

This use of objects to represent something else plays into our understanding of God as well.  Because Object Relations Theory is based on relationships, our understanding of God comes into play, since it, too, is a relationship.  Culbertson writes about this relationship between a person and God, "God loves us first, and we see that love reflected in a tangible manner in the faces of human beings around us."

This is to say that our concepts, our constructions of images of God, come from the way we are treated by others who say they know and love this God. 

Culbertson goes on to say that our understanding of God can be seen in three parts.

• The Subject-God:  This is the God of theologians and scholars, a God understood through reason and intellectual discourse, the God of the Creed.
• The Object-God:  This is the God-image that is the result of our relationships with others throughout our lifetime who teach us and help us to understand God.
• The God Beyond:  This is the God beyond our human capacity to understand, the God who reminds us that all our images of God are insufficient and finite, projections of our experience, the God who reminds us "my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways" (Isa. 55:8)

The Object-God is the image of God we first develop and is the most lasting throughout our lifetime.  Culbertson states, "The first three years of a child's life are the most significant for the formation of an object-God." 

The object-God is formed through internalized images and feelings from relations with parents, siblings, and playmates, plus the socail, economic, and religious situation in which the family lives.  It is also crafted by the instructions and other verbal messages about God that parents give their children.

"The child does not consciously create the image of God out of fantasy, but rather out of the concrete experiences of family prayer, stories, or questions asked of parents.  The child's sense and image of God are thus, in a complex way, closely connected with the child's parents."

If we didn't take our baptismal vows to our children seriously, Culbertson really brings it to a head here.  Those first three years of life will give an image of God to our children that they will continue to affirm, deconstruct, and understand anew throughout life.  The stories we read, the prayers we offer, the service we model display for our children what it means to follow Jesus.

Consider your own life.  Where did your first image of God come from? Who modeled the life of discipleship for you?  What image of God have you carried with you, deconstructed, put aside, and met in new ways throughout your life?

How we raise our children in faith matters for their relationship with God begins at birth, and it grows every day.

Not Ashamed of the Gospel- Samaritan House

I will always remember the elective course on Paul's letter to the Romans that I took while in seminary.  More than any other class I took during those three years, this course influenced how I read the Bible, understand my personal faith, and interpret the world around me. 

This letter of Paul to a congregation he has never met, lays out the Christian message in a way that still resonates, as he recounts the goodness of God's creation, our sinfulness that destroys the world God made and loves, God's righteous action to respond to our disobedience but doing so by becoming incarnate among us and dying to destroy the powers of sin and death that have enslaved the world.  The death and resurrection of Jesus, then, become the new beginning, the rebirth into a new life in a new creation, and his rising is a promise of our own resurrection at the end of history, when God completes the salvtion of the world and all live together in peace.

In our course, we dissected this biblical letter much like you would dissect a novel or poem or letter in an English course.  Early on, we established that Paul's "thesis statement" in the letter is 1:16-17, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, 'The one who is righteous will live by faith.'"

Our professor, Dr. Beth Johnson, helped us to see the complexity of the Greek word we translate as "ashamed."  The term certainly connotes embarrassment, and Paul is declaring that he is not embarrassed by the proclamation of Jesus Christ.  Honor and shame, however, were the defining characteristics of the early Greco-Roman culture, and shame was the result of putting your trust in someone or something that failed you in the end.  Shame could destroy a career, cause loss of position in the community, could bring economic ruin.  It left you ostracized and alone.

Therefore, when Paul declares that he is not ashamed of the gospel, we might think of him as saying, "I am puting my trust in the Good News of the saving death of Jesus Christ for the world, and that Good News will not let me down!"

I find that radical trust, personally, to be my daily calling that I struggle to live into.  It may be apparent from my preaching patterns, but I frequently feel that the powers of sin and death are winning over the power of the gospel, and so serving the crucified Lord begins to look a little embarrassing or untrustworthy. 

Today, however, I had the opportunity to attend an advisory board meeting of Appalachian Outreach, a local ministry in our community that seeks to live out the love of Jesus Christ in a variety of ways including home repair work, a clothes closet, a food pantry, and operating a homeless shelter known as Samaritan House.

The organization has been in the process of building a new Samaritan House which they expect to open in August of this year.  Land for the project was donated for the build and volunteers locally and from around the country have given their times and skills to construct the new facility.  Even with those donations, however, the cost of the project will still come out to roughly $850,000. 

At our meeting today, we were told that the thrift store, Second Source, has been regularly donating their proceeds to the Samaritan House project over the last six years.  During that time, the thrift store (which charge $1 to $2 for each item they sell) has donated over $699,000 to the building of the Samaritan House (and yes, that is not a typo...)!  Several members of our congregation serve there regularly, sorting clothes and making sales, and I would encourage you to talk to them to learn more about the work of Second Source. 

When I heard about that success, the generosity of the organization, the contribution they have made to bringing wholeness to the lives of others in our community, I could not help but think that there is indeed power in this gospel we proclaim.  This expanded ministry, the hands that have worked, the prayers that have been offered, the donations that have been given, shows the world what salvation looks like.  Salvation looks like a warm place to sleep when all hope seems lost.  Salvation is a second chance at a new life.  Salvation is an emptying of ourselves for the wholeness of the world.  Thanks to the hard work of the volunteers and customers of the Second Source Thrift Store, the promise of salvation is being celebrated in our community through the new Samaritan House. 

Let us, then, not be ashamed of the gospel, for its power is being made known among us even now.

Pentecost Offering

In addition to posting over the next couple of weeks, I wanted to highlight two stories in our recent church newsletter.  This particular story comes from my friend, the Rev. Kristin Stroble, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Poland, Ohio.  Kristin is an alumnus of the PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer mission year program.  Our annual denominational Pentecost Offering (which we will collect on May 20 and June 3 due to Pentecost Sunday being an ecumenical worship service) goes to support this program among others.

The PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program is a national and international program of mission service for young adults of faith. I spent a year in this formative program serving in the Philippines. The tag line for this program is "a year of service for a lifetime of change." I could write a book about my experiences in the Philippines and about the way that this year of service continues to impact my life. Instead I’ll offer you some highlights about the transformational effect that the YAV program has had on my life and ministry.

In the YAV program I learned how to live in community, both with those who are similar to me and those who have little in common with me. In the Philippines I started out living in an intentional community with other young adults from the US, Germany, and Indonesia. Together we struggled with culture shock, language, witnessing the harsh realities of this country, and how to live in community through it all. I then went to live with a Filipino family, who taught me about hospitality and the bonds that can be formed with people who initially seem to have nothing in common with you. I learned how to live simply and what is truly important in life. I learned acceptance, how to accept myself and my own vulnerabilities as well as the stranger in our midst.
I learned how to ask questions and to accept that they might not have easy answers or any answers at all. I learned the risk involved in truly following God’s call for peace and justice. I grew in my spiritual journey as I sought to find God in difficult places and to theologically reflect on my experiences in the Philippines. I learned that ministry isn’t about programs, having all the answers, or being the best preacher. Instead I learned that ministry is about relationships, being present with each other and being pre-sent with God. Life in relationship is walking beside each other through the joys and the sorrows, knowing that Christ is our companion in the journey.

I’m not the only one who has been impacted by the YAV program and I pray that this program will continue to thrive and transform the lives of young adults in our de-nomination. I know of no other program in the Presbyterian Church that has this kind of impact. Support the Pentecost offering so that others may experience a year of service and a lifetime of change.