"Intro to Our Church" Series Coming

We are starting a new series called “Intro to Our Church.” Over the month, we will explore the basic beliefs and structure of the Presbyterian Church as well as our particular church here in Mt. Vernon. The bigger picture of taking the time to do this is an effort to share the vision of our church’s mission in Mt. Vernon. Who are we called to be as individuals… as a congregation? What are our values and our ministries that reflect those values? This will be a fantastic experience for long-time, new, and prospective members of the church.

August will include a 9am discussion time and a 10am worship time where topics will be explored. As a sort of warmup, I would like to share with you the following explaination of worship from the latest issue of Presbyterians Today magazine on the “Building Blocks of Worship.” The following is a summary of that article.
For Christians in the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition, worship contains the following elements:
PRAISE As God’s people gather for worship, we focus our attention on God and away from ourselves.
CONFESSION We cannot come into the presence of our holy God without realizing our own sinfulness. When we confess, we do so for ourselves and for the church as a whole.
ASSURANCE Scripture calls us to confession and then assures us of God’s forgiving love.
ILLUMINATION Before attempting to listen for the Word of God, we pray for the Holy Spirit’s help to open our ears to hear and our hearts to receive what God is saying in the Scripture and through the sermon.
WORD The Word of God comes from Scripture. Interpretation of God’s Word comes through Spirit-inspired sermons, dramas, music, dance, or other forms of communication.
PRAYER Part of our response to God’s Word in prayer, which can come in many different forms and formats.
THANKSGIVING Our greatest rejoicing comes around Communion. We also express thankfulness in our offerings to God. We believe that our offerings are simply a return of a portion of the blessings received from God.
TRUE WORSHIP When the worship service is concluded, our true worship begins. Everything we know about God teaches us that our true worship is in the daily glorification and enjoyment of God. We seek to live the Word in our lives.

Broken Shells

Just got back from a vacation to Myrtle Beach, SC. What a fantastic time of rest and renewal! As we sat in the sand and enjoyed the days, my children worked hard on building sand castles and shell collections. Joining them for shell collecting was an exercise in patience and open-mindedness. Whereas I was careful in selecting shells with peculiar colors and near-perfect shapes, they were engaged in grabbing just about anything that popped out to them. Many were odd shapes and sizes. Some were not even shells but rocks or pieces of garbage worn down by the waves for who knows how long.
It was an extraordinary exercise of my will not to reject what they found, resisting the urge to change their minds about the treasures they found. I wonder how many times we are the same way in the Church. We have an idea as to what kinds of people we welcome as members or help with benevolence. And then God sends us one that doesn't match our profile... one that seems not worthy of our collection. Those are the times when we need to have God's prophets among us celebrating and encouraging the entire church to enter into the celebration. Like the older son in the story of the prodigal son (the one who stayed home faithfully and did not waste away his inheritance in wild living), we need to be encouraged to enter into the celebration for one that was lost is now found. And this one is not just a child of God but also a brother or sister of ours!
And the other thing we should all remember about shells on the seashore as well as people in the pew... we are all broken. What we call "whole shells" are really just broken shells with neat edges, split apart in ways that we recognize. We are all broken shells. Thanks be to God that Christ walks the shorelines and sees the beauty in all of us.

Fuzzy Love

I really like this photo. It shows the front portion from one of our Mt. Vernon Group Workcamp worship gatherings. That night over 350 voices were joined to celebrate what God was doing in the community and in their lives. The picture is a bit fuzzy and blurry. And as the week after Workcamp starts, I am aware that my own memories are becoming like this photo. Filled with hope and love... but getting fuzzy and blurry.

How do we maintain that mountain top experience?

I think part of the answer is "Don't stop." Whatever you were doing in that moment, don't stop doing it! Now, we can't have a year-long workcamp going on in our community, but we can continue to find ways to express this love that God has for all. For me, the workcamp brought three essential elements:

1) The community received love from God through the people of God. As Christians, we should continually seek ways to be the hands and hearts of Christ, reaching out to the community. For some people, it has been a long time since they saw the people of God sharing God's love with them. We want to blame them for not coming to church, but why aren't we blaming ourselves for not going to them more often?

2) Ministry opportunities were created for the local body of Christ. In our church, over 95% of the regular attenders were involved in this ministry... 95%!!!! That is phenomenal. The key was generating a host of ways for people to contribute (applications, site selection, material deliveries, handing out drinks, prayer team, snack coordination, delivering groceries, taking tours to encourage workers, etc.). We tried so hard to create opportunities for all. Other ministries of the church could use that same attitude.

3) The greater body of Christ was connected to the ministry. We were able to involve multiple churches, local foundations/organizations, our presbytery, Group Workcamps Foundation and people from over 10 different states in attending the workcamp. We may not be able to regularly attract outside groups to come to our town, but we can use the resources of regional and national ministry organizations so that we do not continually reinvent the wheel. Also, why don't we partner with other service clubs to do Christ's work? They may be shy, but if we can make it easy for them to participate, they are often looking for ways to have effective community impacts.

Well, I better go look at a few more photos... try to hold on to the fuzzy memories of God's love. And then, we'll start looking for ways to participate in a few more new memories.