May Our E-mails Be Simple

Great story by NPR on the update Anglican blessing of the tools of the work force. Seems the Rev. Canon David Parrott offered a prayer at a service in London:

"...a modern take on a prayer for laborers that dates to medieval times then: plows and hammers. Now: smart phones and laptops. The blessing: "May our tongues be gentle, our e-mails be simple and our Web sites be accessible."

Amen and amen.

Story HERE

Hmmmm, wonder where I can get my iPhone and laptop blessed around here...

LOL

Peace

Children and the Church

From the blog "Real Live Preacher" which I have mentioned before. Gordon writes the following at the end of an amazing post and it just blew me away. Yes, I believe this is some fundamental truth. Too often we give lip service to it without realizing what fully living into it means:

Your church might meet in a cathedral that stuns the world with its beauty, but if children do not feel loved there, it is worth nothing. And your church might have 5000 members and its own television show, but if children don’t want to be there, it comes to nothing. Your church might be generous and give all of its money to feed the poor, but if you are not gentle and generous with the children on your own doorstep, it means nothing.

The challenge of meeting this standard is a stiff one. It means actually accepting our children as brothers and sisters in Christ. It means actually thinking about their needs, gifts and limitations. It means CHANGING some of what we do and/or how we do it on Sunday and other days. It means ending the divide between "real/big/main" church and youth ministry. It means extra noise and a bit more chaos during the service. It means explaining stuff some of us already know. I could go on and on but Gordon has distilled it pretty well.

Peace
JP

In God's Office

It was an interesting Sunday for yr hmbl srvnt. Earlier this year my Lady Wife and I went up to check out the Festival of Short Plays at the Kid's university. She was directing one (which was brilliant) but we also saw another show that jumped out at us. The Kid and I both instantly wanted to do it for the home congregation.

The show is "In God's Office" by Damian Trasler, a 10 minute piece that revolves around a delivery man who walks into, you guessed it, God's Office. What grabbed me was that the playwright managed to combine some funny bits with some uncomfortable, shift in your seat moments into a very nice complete short piece. We decided to give it a spin by having the kid play God. A 21 year old young woman dressed with a slight hippy flair.

She was brilliant.

To be honest I was a little nervous. Since the mid-80's I've only done a couple pieces of theater and I worry a little about my ability to memorize lines. Not that it was ever a problem and it isn't now. I just like to worry about stuff. I actually learned all my lines in less than two weeks time and did a pretty good job of getting them all out in the right order and using the words that Mr. Trasler had so carefully chosen. (Note: Damian is English, living in Canada. His dialogue reads like "English" English rather than "American" English. So we took a few liberties and changed some small bits so we didn't sound like utter yutzes. We hope the author will forgive us).

We got laughs in all the right places, congratulations all round and even a "Bravo" from the local newspaper's longtime theater critic who just happens to be a member of the congregation.

So, yeah, it felt good.

It also means the Kid and I can check one item off our "Bucket List" since we've talked about performing together for a long time now. I'd certainly look forward to working with her again. She finds my pre-performance butterflies rather comical in an annoying sort of way.

Of course it didn't occur to me until the time had come (we did this in place of the sermon) that we'd never actually vetted the script with the clergy! They didn't ask either it should be noted. So they were going on total trust that they wouldn't have a lot of 'splainin' to do afterwards. Don't think that will be a problem.

So that's the last of the "big projects" for the summer. I'll probably take a couple days off this week. Time for the Kid to go back to college for one. Dad's always needed when there's heavy lifting around...

Peace

A little excitement for today

Our parish is right down town in the city on Main Street so we are often right on the scene for traffic accidents. Well today we were suddenly greeted by what sounded like an especially big accident. When we looked out our window we discovered how right we were:


She hit our church!



She's fine I hasten to add. We have no idea how she did this. She had to come up over the curb then up two steps to wedge the car between a wrought iron rail and a 100 year old stone wall. The railing is bent about 6 inches out of true, the wall shrugged the whole thing off. The car has the visible body damage plus it's torn away at least one rear sway bar. Her explanation makes no sense whatsoever and I've heard it at least three times.

Ironically she was headed to the garage just around the corner to get her tail light fixed.

Peace

Weekend Update March 2

The Week That Was - The week was pretty quiet but the weekend got hopping. I dropped two more pounds on the weight loss program which was nice. It'll be interesting to see tomorrow's weight since I had a lot of "road work" this weekend and had to figure out how to eat properly. I think I did OK.

Bishop's Ball went well. Numbers were more "normal" than last year. Two of the local school districts had dances the same day. Whattya gonna do? The folks who showed up had a good time. The bishop and his lovely wife both looked tired by the end of the evening. Many thanks to the very hard working volunteers at Calvary!

I've taken to spending the night of Bishop's Ball at a hotel simply because 1: I'm tired, 2: it's a 90 minute drive home and 3: you can't trust the weather in February. So I got up Sunday morning at went to church at St. Paul's Harris Hill. Wonderful folks, very welcoming (but we do need to talk about how they integrate kids into the worship service).

Then I had some fun. I've picked up an extra little job mid-week (which is an "extra" day off for me since I'm at 80 of full time)and I'm doing some video taping for a Lenten program with our ELCA brothers and sisters. It's going to put some extra, non-budget money in my pocket which my lovely, intelligent and graceful lady wife (who spoils me whenever she can. Love that woman!)told me I could use to buy my very first digital camera. I've been a hobby photographer for more than 30 years and it's clear that digital was something I needed to get. So the kid and I hopped in the car and went window shopping (My lady wife doesn't like window shopping. She shops like a man - know what you want, know where it is, get it, buy it, go home). I knew what I wanted (at least 8 megapixels, 10x optical zoom and under $200) and low and behold I found it! The Fujifilm Finepix S1000. 10 megapixels, 12x zoom and on sale! I have LOTS to learn now! Very exciting.

The To Do List - Video project( how much longer can I put this one off?), prep for our planning retreat in two weeks, hopefully get the camp brochures out, just the usual mad rush.

What Am I Procrastinating About? - Apparently I haven't stopped procrastinating about the video project! Maybe this is the week.

What Am I Watching/Reading/Listening To? Still working on "Soul Graffiti", finished Angels and Demons. I've started a Ray Bradbury book and I've completely forgotten the title!


Movies - None
Music - Nothing new

Next Up First and foremost is the planning retreat. I've got about 12 days to work that out.

How Am I Doing Still feeling frazzled. There's just so many things I want to get done and I'm kind of stuck in neutral. I just need to grab and rock and go.

Peace

I'm so angry I could spit

Much to the surprise of many folks who know me I am a regular reader of "The Living Church". I don't always agree with their editorial point of view but on the whole they are a reasonable voice of a more conservative view point than my own. My thoughts are often stimulated by what I read there.

Well we blew by "stimulated" with this morning's mail. As if often the case we received two copies over the weekend the July 27 and August 10 issues (the August 3 issue arrived last week - go figure). It was the July version that caught my eye. I've reproduced the cover here so you can judge for yourself.

The full cover is of young people attending EYE. The headline is EYE. I anticipated a nice article on this big event. I would think this is what any reasonable person would expect from a news magazine. Inside there was one additional photograph and a very short editorial. The editorial amounted to "We have young people in the church. They do cool stuff. We should keep doing that". The editorial was about three column inches long, the majority being a list of things that young people are doing in some parts of the church.

I was flabbergasted. I was dumbfounded. I was, well I don't use that kind of language on this blog. But I'll bet you can guess.

There was nothing about EYE, a gathering of over a thousand young people. An event where the Presiding Bishop appeared, hung out, worshiped with us before she left for Lambeth. If you don't know what EYE is you certainly won't find out by reading the TLC issue. There isn't any information there.

Once again young people are used as window dressing. It's gee, isn't that swell but let's not waste any of our resources on them. There's too many more important things going in the church.

And we wonder why the Sunday attendance is so old?

I'm so mad I want to swear. To throw things. To pound on something. When in the name of all that is Holy are we going to learn? I'm at a loss for words.

I'm sure the editors at TLC probably wish that were true. I just sent them a blistering letter (all very Anglican polite but seriously angry). We'll see if it shows up any time soon. If not I'll share it here at a later date.

What a rotten way to start a Monday.

Peace

On being passionate

For any of you who found the title titillating I'm afraid you're in for a disappointment. I'm talking about being passionate about faith and ministry.

My last post was a rant about folks who, if I'm being honest, I thought gored my ox. As it turned out it was mostly mis-communication with one of them(but not the other). A wise lady friend and former youth minister sent me a long but profound note about youth ministry. It got me thinking.

And here's what I thought:

I've known for years that I'm really only interested in things that I can dive fully into. That's when I'm fully engaged and I tend to throw myself into it. I was that way for a long time in my previous career in radio. It's how I am about youth ministry. One of my catch phrases is "Good enough isn't good enough". I have a perfectionist streak in me. When things aren't perfect I tend to get down about it. I could have done more, I could have done it better.

You can not imagine how many times my lady wife has watched me beat myself up this way. It's what I do.

But it's also what makes me good at what I do. I can get fully engaged because I BELIEVE in what I'm doing. And it bugs the heck out of me when I see people who aren't willing to go that far. I used to drive people crazy in my last career because I'd say "I only expect you to work as hard as I do. I accept that you may be better at some things than I am and that I'm better at somethings than you are. Final results are whatever they turn out to be. But I expect you to work as hard as I do. And I work very hard".

I expect that when a diocese or congregation tells me that youth ministry is important that they are going to WORK HARD at it. Too often youth programs are just that, programs designed to keep the kids busy and out of the adults hair. It's about the lecture hall vision of teaching and the "We have relationship with our youth for two hours every Sunday". It's "Oh that Bob and Mary's daughter" instead of learning the kid's name.

I have a confession (you're going to think I'm nuts). I hate what I'm about to do. It feels like cheating, like I can't do my own thinking and writing. It feels like I'm slacking.

I told you, I'm nuts. But it's how I feel.

I'm going to quote somebody else (see, see!!!! Nuts!). Martin Saunders is the Editor of Youthwork Magazine and Chair of Youthwork the Partnership, a huge youth ministry movement in the UK. I saw this interview at a great website run by the amazing Len Evans (Youth Ministry Interviews) and it just spoke to me. Len asked him "How would you like to see youth ministry change":

"I’d like to see every member of our churches start to take responsibility for young people – starting with the ‘adult’ leaders. The biggest problem for youth workers here is that many churches employ them to ‘take care of the problem’ of young people, instead of trying to understand and engage with them at every level. Unless young people get integrated into the hearts of our churches, then our churches are not long for this world. And of course, it’s the adult church leaders who hold the keys. So I’d love to see us move towards a model where the whole church takes some responsibility for young people – even if that just means praying for and mentoring them."

(Lazy. Slacker. You disgust me.)(I'm JOKING people!)

Martin got it exactly right. This is my hope for youth ministry as well. I don't care if we do great programs, or any program at all. I don't care if we do Youth Sundays or whatever.

We need to stop taking care of our youth and begin caring about our youth.

And now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to work.

Peace

An intersting weekend

Kept very busy this weekend. The most interesting bit was probably the parish visit with the Bishop. I had driven up to his house then we car pooled to Trinity church in Albion. A beautiful drive up through the country side.

When we pulled it was a little surprising to see TWO police cars parked outside the back door of the church. Turns out they'd had a break in the night before. A total of 11 doors (every locked door in the church) was kicked in. And I mean KICKED in, door jambs shattered, parts of the dead bolt locks lying on the other side of the rooms, pieces of door frames all over the floors. Bizarrely almost nothing was taken. A video camera, a couple of small checks and the roast beef intended for the luncheon with the bishop. That's it. The wine was left, the various silver untouched, all the VCRs, TVs, boom boxes etc. right where they belong. There was no vandalism other than kicking in the safety door of the small elevator. It's a small congregation and the repairs are going to be a bit of a financial strain.

Beyond that they were a wonderful host! At the peace young and old greeted each other usually by name. And they did one thing that I thought was really cool. Many of our parishes will have members who for one reason or another find it difficult or impossible to make it to the communion rail. So commonly (in my experience) Communion is brought to them at the end of the process. Not at Trinity. They serve those folks FIRST! It was one of those "BOOOOOIING!" moments. It seems so obvious that we should serve our eldest and our infirm members FIRST and ourselves SECOND.

DUH.

Meanwhile it's the sprint to Diocesan Convention at the end of the week. I have lots of stuff to get done. Then when I get there I get to be the "media expert" or maybe it's "media peon" for not only the sound system this year. We're also going high tech with multiple projectors and computers for Powerpoint presentations etc. So I actually arrive a day in advance of most everyone else.

So it'll be a busy week. Keep our brothers and sisters in Albion in your prayers. Pray also for the person or persons who felt compelled to break in.

Oh yeah and pray for yr hmbl srvnt.

Peace

Ah the joys of being an Anglican

One of the great traditions of our faith community is the beauty of Anglican chant. I've heard people say that chant can make anything beautiful. How about the weather forecast?

Check it out Weather Chant

Peace

My Home in Faith 2

This is one of the stained glass windows in our chapel. We don't have ANY gargoyles like Lee does but we've got some pretty snifty stained glass. I've always liked St. George.

I find stained glass a challenge to shoot because the light is shining through the subject rather than reflecting off of it. Plus the problem with hot spots like on the good saint's thigh.

I'll probably add some more of the chapel saints as we move along.

Peace

The Parable of My Father's Guitar

(For some reason blogger put this post in out of order. This is the latest addition to the blog

I've been contemplating my father's guitar and thinking about church.

A moment of confession. I love guitar music and have always wanted to play. My fear of failure always holds me back. My dad's guitar isn't anything fancy or expensive. It's a simple instrument and he taught himself to play on it. I hope to do the same thing.

When I pulled it out of the guitar case I realized we had a few problems. The tuners were loose and one knob's shaft was bent. The bridge at the bottom (that's the wooden thing that holds the pegs that hold the strings) was cracked. As I looked at the bridge I saw that either originally or as a repair someone had drilled two holes in in it and put a pair of small bolts in to hold it. The crack ran right between the two bolts, from one end to the other. And the pegs couldn't hold the strings properly.

I'm not a luthier (that's an expert who builds and/or repairs guitars) and I don't have much money for this project. So I did a little research. The tuners were easy and not very expensive. When I was done the guitar looked 100x better. Now I'll be able to tune each string perfectly. The bridge wasn't expensive but it worries me more. The peg holes need to be drilled (they're started but not the whole way through) and I'll need to glue it in place. That means preparing the wood on the body of the guitar, sanding it carefully to remove the old adhesive. The carefully aligning it. Making sure that the saddle, the piece the strings actually rest on, is set just right.

And I keep thinking to myself "It would just be easier to pitch this in the trash and get a new guitar. One that doesn't come with these 'inherited' problems."

The problem for me is that it's important that this was my father's guitar. There's some tradition there, and it helps me feel a little closer to my dad, who died several years ago. With a little care I may be able to pass it along to another generation for them to learn to play as well. To do that means I have to make a few sacrifices, I have to learn some new skills, and I have to care for the things that have been passed along to me.

As I thought about that guitar it struck me that it's a lot like the church. We inherit it from our parents (and those before). It's not always in perfect shape. Some things wear out or aren't able to do their jobs the way we want them done. Some ideas (or repairs) just haven't held up very well. It would be easy for us to just say "The hell with it. We're going to pitch all this stuff over the side and do a new thing. One that works for us."

To do that means we need to pitch our parents and all those others who came before over the side as well. It means we've decided that this is really only about us. And those who come after us? Well they get whatever they get.

Instead we should take a look at what we've inherited. The body is strong and the neck is straight. The tuners don't work properly any more but we just need a newer version of the same thing. The bridge is broken and needs replaced. The strings are stretched and no longer hold a note. New strings will make the guitar sound a little different but soon that voice will become familiar as it sounds the notes.

In the end it will look a little different. And it will sound a little different. The essence of the instrument will remain the same. It will be ready for me to pass along to the next player. Because in the end it isn't my guitar, I'm only caring for it for a while.

Peace

Peace

An interface problem

Had an interesting challenge pop up the other day. Some background:

I've been appointed (strictly by default mind you) as the audio/visual "expert" at my home parish. So I help out with decisions on sound systems and video equipment. We video tape the 10 AM service and then have it broadcast on the local cable access channel. We're hoping that it works for our shut-ins or folks who can't get to church, and as a form of new age evangelism. It's become a big part of my ministry within the congregation over the last five years or so. Recently we decided to go a step farther and download the sermons as podcasts. (Interested? Check them out HERE plus check out our TV ad, with yours truly doing the voice over). To do this we called on the skills of a friend, the Rev. Merrill Woolnough. Merrill is a Lutheran pastor currently between gigs who is rather technologically savvy. She's serving now as our "volunteer Associate for Internet Ministries". I enjoy working with Merrill she's intelligent, gentle and I feel the Spirit working within her. And I like Elwood too.

Elwood is her service dog. Merrill is blind. And that's where the interface problem arose.

To record the sermons digitally we use a small recording device called an "iriver". It's not terribly complicated and has recorded some classes we've presented quite nicely. But the sermon project was just crashing and burning. Between the two of us we couldn't figure out why. Last Sunday I began fiddling with the dingus out of frustration and figured it out.

Imagine Merrill and me at that first meeting with the dingus. She's used it before and is explaining the functions to me. I'm looking at a screen that is literally an inch by a half inch. I get to the right screen and scroll down looking for "Line In Record". I find it, we discuss the two controls. Merrill is a little hazy on what the other one does so we ignore it and move on.

Scan ahead to Sunday. This time I keep scrolling down. Wait, what's happening here? The screen in fact doesn't scroll, it pages. That means I don't see the "Line In Record" feature scroll up on the screen, I see an entirely new page of options. And an entirely new "Line In Record" option. The one we'd been using was the record "mode" (don't ask), the second one was record "volume". That's what we'd been trying to adjust all along and failing. When I told Merrill we both instantly saw where we'd goofed and had a good laugh.

Merrill was relying on words to communicate with a sighted person. The sighted person (yours truly) was relying on what he saw. We were both sure that we'd bridged the gap between us. And we'd been wrong.

How often does that happen? We come into a relationship with our own blinders, physical, mental or spiritual. We think that everyone understands what we're saying, what we believe, how we think. And we get frustrated when others don't see it that way. Too often these days people seem to be content to get frustrated and walk away without making the effort to see beyond what they "see". It strikes me that we're perhaps too desperate to hold on to our particular world view at all costs rather than risk discovering something by trying to look beyond it.

My world view and Merrill's haven't changed. But I've come away with a deeper understanding of having to stretch myself a little further to insure that she and I truly communicate. There's a lesson there for all of us.

Meanwhile it's back to square one with the podcasts. Hope to have that fixed finally.

Peace

Youth video

If you haven't discovered Father Matthew Moretz you're missing out. Here's a video he did with some of the youth of his church


He has more videos with his rather tongue in cheek approach to church and theology on displayHERE

Peace

Words Along the Way - Church

Time for another pause along our journey. Think of it as a time to sit and rest and talk a bit.

Last time I promised to explain why I think church is important. Let's make sure we're clear on what we're talking about. "Church" to me is the gathering of fellow believers, usually to worship but also including times of study or even just hanging out together. When we are gathered together (check Matthew 18:20) Jesus is with us and we are the church. So on Sunday mornings we're the church, at vestry meetings or conventions we're the church. We're even the church when we get together to tell each other that we're wrong and apostate and heretics. I'm not so sure that Jesus is happy with his church at those moments but that's another issue.

Notice that there's no mention of the buildings or institutions. No mention of the committees or whatever BEING the church. That stuff, including what we do on Sundays, is merely how we express what it means to be the church. The buildings can all fall down, every BCP can disappear, even every copy of the Bible could disappear and if we gathered together in faith we would still be the church.

The problem that a lot of us (including me many days) have with "church" is dealing with those other issues. Who's the boss, which service should we use, which Bible translation, which traditions or what kind of music? None of that is THE CHURCH. Getting hung up on it keeps us from focusing on the important stuff. You know, Love God, Love One Another, et cetera.

The church, the real, important church, is about people. People worshiping together, caring for one another, teaching one another, learning from one another. That other stuff is merely the manner which we have chosen to travel the way, the journey. How we do it is much less important than that we are doing it. If we choose to emphasize the real church then we will not, we can not choose a bad manner to travel.

So is church still boring sometimes? Yes. Find your way through. Like any journey some parts are easier and more interesting than others. Sermon not speaking to you? Fine, take a look at the scriptures and see what it does say to you. Take the time for some quiet conversation of your own with God. Get to know the other folks who are travelling along with you. Let them help you find your own method of travel. You may also discover that you can help them too.

I said in the last one of these that it takes time to make important decisions. The church offers you a history of how other people did it. Do you really WANT to make the same mistakes others made? Wouldn't it be nice to have someone point out a short cut to you? That to me is the church working at it's best. Remember that folks who chose a different means of travel are still members of the church. Treat them with respect. Hopefully they'll do the same but a lot of travellers will defend "their way" as the only way. Wish them well and keep moving. When someone asks you answer them gently and explain that this is the way you've chosen and why (that answer may change as time goes on, but that's cool).

Then point them towards the church to help them continue their journey.

We'll talk again.

Peace