remember when we all used one word to describe RCLPC? Here they are…our community of believers, in a wordle! The bigger the word, the more times it was said.
What do you think? Does this describe RCLPC? How would you describe RCLPC to a friend? Go for it–and help us grow our community! 
Amy Butler, pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington DC, posted this today. It seems fitting for our reflection this week. I have changed some of the specifics (names and places) to fit our community.
Amy writes:
I first read some version of this prayer more than ten years ago. It was written by a friend and mentor of mine, Rev. Sharlande Sledge, who probably was the first woman I ever saw in a pulpit wearing a clerical robe. As you will see, she also has a gift with words beyond compare. With her permission I first used this prayer at a community Thanksgiving service many years ago. The experience was so moving that it has become my Thanksgiving practice to offer some version of this prayer every year in Sunday worship before Thanksgiving. It changes all the time–all the details and specifics of the prayer shift each year to speak to God out of the life of this congregation here and now. But the essence of the prayer remains the same.
It would have been enough, Lord, to live on this earth, to have the holy privilege of being human, to be able to breathe deeply and move and touch and taste, to get to hug and cry and sing and sigh with relief, to take sips of water and feel the wind on our cheeks, to pick up smooth stones and hear the rain on the roof, to stand beneath the wondrous sky with our souls swaying in awe.
It would have been enough to have the gift of one day, but instead you gave us the rhythm of work and rest, seven days that cycle through the bare branches of winter into the growth of spring and summer to the harvest of fall.
It would have been enough, Lord, to have one source of water, but we have oceans full of another world of life, waves washing the shore, rain to sustain the land, rivers to baptize our spirits, streams in the desert, and, when we need it, a cool cup to quench our thirst.
It would have been enough to be nourished by manna in the wilderness, but we get to savor the taste of bread made of wheat or corn, oats or rye, sometimes shaped into tortillas, sometimes laced with cinnamon, with walnuts or blueberries tossed in. And to our table God added peaches and pumpkins and pomegranates, eggplants, mushrooms and apricots—and a circle of people who feast with us in communion.
It would have been enough to inhabit the earth with humankind. But you created elephants, caterpillars, lizards and ladybugs, giraffes and wild turkeys. O God, you filled the air with butterflies and dragonflies and the ocean with starfish, turtles and whales.
The privilege of living in communion with you, Lord, would have been enough, but we also get to live in neighborhoods and in community, to feel connected to brothers and sisters around the globe, to share our wealth with the hungry, to visit Egypt, Mexico, Colombia, Palestine, Louisiana, and inner city Chicago, both ourselves and through the prayers, stories, and courageous actions of others; to marvel at language beyond words and in words, to travel and to return home.
Talking to communicate our simple needs would have been enough, but we also get to sing in harmony and laugh until our sides ache, offer healing words and embrace each other with our prayers. It would have been enough to walk through the seasons of life with our faith family. But we have also been given the treasure of grieving together, celebrating together, and even working through conflict together. What a deep and profound gift.
It would have been enough, Lord, to hear our own voices, but you gave us the sounds of Jimmy Stewart, Maya Angelou and Garrison Keillor. It would have been enough to have one way to make music, but we have Bach and Rutter and the Indigo Girls, drums, organ and the voices of our children. One book would have been an incredible gift, but we have been lavished with Dr. Seuss and E.B. White, Emily Dickinson and Annie Dillard, Wordsworth and the Apostle John and Anne Lamott and Frederick Buechner.
It would have been enough to be blessed with arms open to receive God’s gifts, but we are also blessed with the chance to participate with creativity and imagination in bringing healing to a broken world.
It would have been enough for you to offer us love once, but your love comes over and over again, every moment of every day, and it is so much more than enough. We offer our deepest thanks. Amen.
As we enter Advent two women are dominating the news-two very different women.
One has just been released from prison, the other is about to step into one.
1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi, only days ago was released from house arrest in Burma or Myanmar.
An advocate of non-violent political action-she once faced down a platoon of soldiers who had their rifles trained on her, she now faces the task of unifying a variety of factions in her country.
Kate Middleton is the sports crazy, hot and leggy 28-year-old that Prince William of the UK has been dating off and on-mostly on-for about nine years. A facile view is that she is Diana redivivus, but in fact Kate is sports crazy, not shy, and more of her own person than Di ever was.
Kate now contemplates, and although apparently of sound mind, has agreed to step into the prison that is the Royal Family. Her life will now be simulcast for as long as this marriage lasts, and particularly if she becomes, as expected the Queen of England.
Both women are storybook material although vastly different stories.
Both women are being called to a very distinct vocation.
Both will need extraordinary quantities of grace and patience to survive
Both have millions of fans-although for different reasons.
One has become an iconic figure for her country; the other is about to be
The Bible gives us a couple of parallel stories I guess. For Kate you might be able to go to Esther-although I don’t know who the wicked Haman would be in our contemporary story.
For Kyi, you go to the apostle Paul who spent a number of years in prison and under house arrest, and considered, like Kyi, his life to be a “libation” poured out on behalf of the cause-in his case, the gospel; in hers, freedom.
I wonder what it is to which we feel called? Kate is just finding out; Kyi has known for years. It is their calling that will define both of these women.
How we respond to God’s call defines us.
You are chosen material, though you might not know it. David, the youngest of many brothers, was tending sheep when summoned by Samuel. Abraham was minding his own business in Ur. Jeremiah was a shy and unwilling youth. Walter Earl Fluker puts it this way: “God often calls us when we are running errands, doing the mundane, thankless chores of life. When we least expect it, we are elected. Moses, hiding out on the back side of the Midian desert, was running an errand when a bush started burning that would not be consumed until he faced Pharaoh. Isaiah was somewhere in the temple, performing his regular priestly duties, when the heavens came down and the Holy commissioned him to go to the valley. Ezekiel, performing his pastoral tasks in the Exile, was transported by divine limousine service to a valley filled with dry bones. Amos was out herding sheep and keeping sycamore trees when the voice came and compelled him to go to the valley.
Andrew and Peter were fishing out on the Sea of Galilee when the Master called them from fishing to the valley.
God calls.We are defined by our response. So what is God calling RCLPC to be ? Yet another struggling institution? A positive force for justice, peace and community? What role do you have in this calling? How will you respond?
This week I was contemplating the prayer partner project and I was reminded of this statement we make:
“We are concerned with the wholeness of each individual and of our community. Because we value the participation of children and youth in the life of our congregation, we believe that it is the privilege and right of each child in the congregation:
1. To be in the midst of the congregation, not on the sidelines;
2. To wander among us during worship, being the responsibility of each of us;
3. To give answers during children’s time without being laughed at;
4. To be called by name by each adult;
5. To be a valued person in the congregation;
6. To be led to faith by the Christlike love, care, and model of each adult;
7. To be an active participant in worship.”
And so I wonder–how do you live out these promises? How is the prayer partner project going for you? What other ways can we pursue the goal of wholeness for each person, no matter their age, and for our community as a whole?
What does it (or might it) mean to think about our task being to engage the whole church in the whole story, all the time?
From Travelling Hopefully: A Spiritual Pilgrimage by Robert Fyall…
There are many times on pilgrimage when situations like this occur; we have, we believe, been called by God and yet he has led us into a cul-de-sac. We do not see how he can meet our need so be panic and we blame others, we blame circumstances, and our vision fails.
It is vision in fact which is vital at moments like these. Vision is not seeing what is not there, vision is seeing ALL that is there. The thirst was real, the desert was real, but so also was the presence of God. The difference was that the presence of God was discerned only by the eye of vision. The letter to the Hebrews, speaking of Moses, captures this in a wonderful phrase: He persevered because he saw him who is invisible (Heb 11:27) It is not that thirst can be conjured away but rather that the resources to meet it are there but not yet visible.” (37)
“it is not that thirst can be conjured away but that the resources to meet it are there but not yet visible.” This reference to the story of Hagar (and to the story of the community of God’s people wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt, and to Elijah running to Mount Horeb as he flees Jezebel, and to countless other stories in our sacred text…I’m sensing a theme…) is a powerful one for a community in the midst of a conversation about stewardship, and resources, and what kind of church community we want to be. Scripture is studded with these stories of vision–of vision lost and found, “of sight regained” (as one of our hymns says), of hope in the middle of the desert.
We are not a community in the desert, at least not yet. We have resources of many kinds, from amazing talents to servant hearts to time to share. We also have the financial resources to do a lot of things…but not everything we have said we want to do, not everything we believe we are called to do, not quite enough to be who we think God wants us to be in our community and in our world. Our congregation operates for 12 months on only 10.5 months worth of income. We believe we are called to be the people of God 24/7, which includes even those 6 unfunded weeks. And we believe that the resources to meet this calling are there, but not yet visible.
What thirst do you have, or do we have as a congregation? And how can we open our eyes to see the resources to meet it? And once we see those resources, how are we going to make sure they get put to good use?
On Sunday morning we handed out the names of 129 young people (from the just-born to the recent college graduate)–129 young people who are part of our congregation’s life in some way!–to be prayed for. You, the people of RCLPC, have taken on the responsibility of fulfilling your baptismal vows in a concrete way, praying for children, youth, and young adults. We as a congregation have purposefully engaged in living out those baptismal vows, living out our mission statement, in a new way. This is an exciting step and we can’t wait to see what happens as these prayer partnerships blossom.
If you have a name (or a few names), please be praying for that young person and their family. Feel free to look them up in the church directory and send them a note or a call letting them know you are praying and/or asking for any particular joys or concerns. Perhaps you want to worship together, or serve in mission together, or pray together, or have coffee together, or any other way that seems good to you. This is about deepening vertical relationships, growing in grace, loving one another across generational and cultural divides. This is about building a spiritual community of hope through prayer.
If you didn’t get a name, you can still be praying for the young people of our congregation, for families, or even for the prayer partners (who could use the prayers too!)! You can pray for the spiritual life of our community, for our whole church to be grace filled, to be aware of the movement of God’s Spirit.
Thank you for embarking on this new adventure in prayer. May the spirit move among us, leading and nudging and nurturing and challenging along the way.
…and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12.27)
This week as we prepare for John’s installation and for the annual stewardship campaign and for the beginning of the prayer partner project, I thought this would be an excellent reminder: we are the church and God is using us to do God’s work in the world…and it can’t be done well without each of us playing our part, just like a body. Are you in?
Don’t forget that this coming Sunday, the 17th, at 3pm we will celebrate John’s installation. This worship service is the formal covenanting between John, the congregation, and the Presbytery. Installation is an act of the Presbytery–the Presbytery installs the pastor (and has to also release the pastor when it’s time for them to go). That means there will be people from all over the Presbytery present!
The service (and the party afterward) are an opportunity for us to celebrate who we are as a congregation, to celebrate what God is doing in our midst and through us, and to celebrate this next step in what God is doing with this church. We hope you’ll join us for this service and the excellent celebration!
(the wild goose–symbol of the holy spirit, who moves among and within us with both beauty and unexpected noise!)
Our church is working hard on ways to foster community, create connections, and build intergenerational relationships. Recent research has shown that “vertical” (intergenerational) relationships are one of the crucial things a church can provide in a culture that increasingly isolates people by age….and the same research has also shown that children and youth that have these vertical relationships are more likely to continue growing in faith throughout their lives. As a church family we seek to support children, youth, families, parents, and college students as you/they grow in faith and travel their life journey, and also to remember that the older can learn from the younger just as much as the other way around. One way we plan to do this is to create a prayer partner system.
Each year (this year on October 17, the national children’s sabbath) we hope to have a sort of “reverse offering” in which people can take a piece of paper containing the name of a child, youth, or college student in our congregation. People will be invited to pray for that person, and their family, throughout the rest of the school year. They will also be encouraged, if they wish, to contact the person or family for particular prayer requests, to let them know they’re being prayed for, to send care packages, or to invite them to participate in worship or mission together. In this way we hope to build connections across generations, creating a true “family” of the church, where each person has extra grandparents or aunts and uncles or even extra parents—people who pray and encourage and help and love and challenge and serve. We also hope to further our connection to our baptismal vows–that together we will love, nurture, and challenge our young people as they grow in faith.
Each slip of paper in this reverse offering will have, inside, the name of a child, youth, or college student, as well as that person’s parents’ names. On the outside will be the person’s age. Contact information will not be listed, but prayer partners will be encouraged to look up that information in the church directory in order to let people know they are being prayed for, to ask for prayer requests or joys to celebrate, to offer encouragement or invitations or mission opportunities or other relationship building options as the partner feels comfortable. Not every person who takes a name will call regularly, not all will invite their partner to things, but hopefully all will at least let the partners know who they are so they can send particular prayer requests or joys to celebrate. We also encourage prayer partners to sit together in worship and to serve together in mission whenever possible. We don’t plan to administer this “program” in a structured way—it’s up to each partner to pray and to nurture relationship in ways they feel God calling them to.
So in two weeks’ time, you’ll be invited to take a name (or two) and become a prayer partner. We hope that everyone will participate in this important ministry opportunity, as we seek to support and nurture one another, to grow in grace, and to continue to become a family together.
