http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/08/yes-miracles-among-ruins-we-did-it.html
Thanks for all who supported, donated, prayed, shared. We made a big missional leap today, and even bigger ones are just around the corner. Read the link above.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Tulsa World article about Miracle Among The Ruins, and more
Here is the link to the story about our community and our Miracle Among The Ruins project for Tulsa North and Turley area that ran in the Tulsa World yesterday.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100827_11_A11_CUTLIN485332
Feel free to share it these last few days of the drive with others; even though donations that come in may not post to our banking account until after the closing date on Tuesday they will still be much appreciated and even moreso greatly needed as grants haven't come in yet and so we will have had to empty all our account and count on some more to come in between now and then to be able to reach the goal, then play dodge the landlord, just like our neighbors often do :), but we will do it. It is a position we are comfortable with; we have a motto that all goes into mission and we like to end each month broke putting it all out into the community, and trusting, as it has happened the past three years, that more will come. Sound theology that. More will come. It is one of the seeds we try to sow in the spirit of this place and in the lives of one another.
Today we are touring our community and discussing our Four Directions Initiative, leaving the center at 9 am, with stops at Cherokee School not only to see our group sponsoring an Art in the Garden Workshop, but also to talk about another exciting transformative project that just came up out of a meeting we were in today, one that we think the OU grad student partners and others will be able to help us with grant writing. We have a plan created with community and school leaders and government officials today to tackle the school children safety issue here where there are no sidewalks and children have to walk in dangerous streets--our school is located on a state highway and people have been hit crossing--and there is bad signage and too high a speed limit.
By expanding our vision to include several blocks spinning out from the school we are going to take care not only to make it safer to get to and from the school, but we will be helping to recreate a sense of a place where our downtown used to be, and might come back with such change as this. We will be helping to create a micro community with safe walkable bikeable paths tree lined and with beautification that will slow down the traffic, which will itself aid the few existing businesses, and will connect the school and businesses and highway with the adjacent bike and pedestrian trail that people don't often depart from as they go through our area because it is not safe to do so. Unlike the other communities along the trail that goes from downtown Tulsa clear out north of Skiatook, we have no accessible places for riders to pause as they ride past us, another way we are cut off from others. We will do this by taking an area around the school and cutting the highway down to two lanes, adding in sidewalks and trees and parallel parking, and running this project also west of the school up the road toward our Miracle Among The Ruins project past which the children and others walk now in dangerous ways and why the park there is a safety measure too.
Among the tour stops this morning will also be the old Methodist church building we are hoping to buy as soon as we can finish buying the Miracle Among The Ruins project. This has always been our big project and dream for a center like we have now expanded, health clinic expanded, and worship space chapel for frequent daily office prayer and individual meditation and more, and it is now looking more doable; if we can buy the gardenkitchenpark property we can use it as collateral for some of the down required on this project.
In fact, this Sunday morning we will be touring and talking about the building at 8:30 am then we will hold a "guerilla underground communion service" in the building at 9 am in the chapel sanctuary space in front of the original 90 year old stained glass window of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, where Jesus is carrying back the one lost sheep, emblematic of how all are saved, how the church exists for others, how all are called home. This is the window that I used to walk past and look up to as a child until I was ten, and so did my father as a child. It is the sanctuary space where my grandfather's funeral was held when I was eight years old. It will be a homecoming communion service and even should we not manage to purchase the building we will have this one Sunday. And as we hold our brief service I will be thinking of all we are engaged in now in the community and remembering in doing so those pioneers one hundred years ago that worked to make this building the first church in the community, called a community church, to serve the whole community.
Then Sunday we will travel out to Hope Church in Tulsa where at 10 am I will give a presentation on our Miracle Among The Ruins project and how it fits into our renewal vision, how it falls under our guiding principles of relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation. Then we will meet at El Rio Verde for lunch together.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100827_11_A11_CUTLIN485332
Feel free to share it these last few days of the drive with others; even though donations that come in may not post to our banking account until after the closing date on Tuesday they will still be much appreciated and even moreso greatly needed as grants haven't come in yet and so we will have had to empty all our account and count on some more to come in between now and then to be able to reach the goal, then play dodge the landlord, just like our neighbors often do :), but we will do it. It is a position we are comfortable with; we have a motto that all goes into mission and we like to end each month broke putting it all out into the community, and trusting, as it has happened the past three years, that more will come. Sound theology that. More will come. It is one of the seeds we try to sow in the spirit of this place and in the lives of one another.
Today we are touring our community and discussing our Four Directions Initiative, leaving the center at 9 am, with stops at Cherokee School not only to see our group sponsoring an Art in the Garden Workshop, but also to talk about another exciting transformative project that just came up out of a meeting we were in today, one that we think the OU grad student partners and others will be able to help us with grant writing. We have a plan created with community and school leaders and government officials today to tackle the school children safety issue here where there are no sidewalks and children have to walk in dangerous streets--our school is located on a state highway and people have been hit crossing--and there is bad signage and too high a speed limit.
By expanding our vision to include several blocks spinning out from the school we are going to take care not only to make it safer to get to and from the school, but we will be helping to recreate a sense of a place where our downtown used to be, and might come back with such change as this. We will be helping to create a micro community with safe walkable bikeable paths tree lined and with beautification that will slow down the traffic, which will itself aid the few existing businesses, and will connect the school and businesses and highway with the adjacent bike and pedestrian trail that people don't often depart from as they go through our area because it is not safe to do so. Unlike the other communities along the trail that goes from downtown Tulsa clear out north of Skiatook, we have no accessible places for riders to pause as they ride past us, another way we are cut off from others. We will do this by taking an area around the school and cutting the highway down to two lanes, adding in sidewalks and trees and parallel parking, and running this project also west of the school up the road toward our Miracle Among The Ruins project past which the children and others walk now in dangerous ways and why the park there is a safety measure too.
Among the tour stops this morning will also be the old Methodist church building we are hoping to buy as soon as we can finish buying the Miracle Among The Ruins project. This has always been our big project and dream for a center like we have now expanded, health clinic expanded, and worship space chapel for frequent daily office prayer and individual meditation and more, and it is now looking more doable; if we can buy the gardenkitchenpark property we can use it as collateral for some of the down required on this project.
In fact, this Sunday morning we will be touring and talking about the building at 8:30 am then we will hold a "guerilla underground communion service" in the building at 9 am in the chapel sanctuary space in front of the original 90 year old stained glass window of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, where Jesus is carrying back the one lost sheep, emblematic of how all are saved, how the church exists for others, how all are called home. This is the window that I used to walk past and look up to as a child until I was ten, and so did my father as a child. It is the sanctuary space where my grandfather's funeral was held when I was eight years old. It will be a homecoming communion service and even should we not manage to purchase the building we will have this one Sunday. And as we hold our brief service I will be thinking of all we are engaged in now in the community and remembering in doing so those pioneers one hundred years ago that worked to make this building the first church in the community, called a community church, to serve the whole community.
Then Sunday we will travel out to Hope Church in Tulsa where at 10 am I will give a presentation on our Miracle Among The Ruins project and how it fits into our renewal vision, how it falls under our guiding principles of relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation. Then we will meet at El Rio Verde for lunch together.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Attraction of Small Things, or What We Told The Medical Students When They Came Here: Part Two
For Part One go to this link:
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2010/07/church-of-small-blessings-or-report-on.html
Part One focused on our talk this summer with medical and other students in a special summer class that came to visit, and specifically about the cumulation of the unjust "little things", and the breakdown of the bigger social fabric, that together create an abandoned place of Empire here, about why the need is great, and one of the major reasons why we choose to live here.
But there was more, a significant "rest of the story" to what we told them, and it is mostly about why we live here, what is so wonderful about living here that brought us here and keeps us here when we have the means to live pretty much anywhere. About why we sometimes feel like a small community of realtors for our area trying to let loose the best kept secret of the quality of life in this northern edge of the Tulsa community. Maybe it is an example of that somewhat eternally perplexing in its simplicity statement that Jesus made that has resonated down through the millenia when he said, scandalously, "Blessed are the poor."
Three years ago when we began our missional transformation and began to hold community talks and forums listening to people in the area, we definitely heard about all those things that are in part one, but that was only after beginning with the initial focus on the strengths of our area, our lives; about the spirit and stories of the place and the people that define us from the grassroots level moreso than do the statistics and the stereotypes that even we so often fall back into using as our default mode. Actually once they got a chance to open up about the things they like about living here there was almost no stopping them; they were so used to community forums being about protests, about what was wrong, about blaming, about trying to get others to do something we felt needed to be done, that once a safe space was created for the pent up positives to emerge, a strong energy was unleashed that was then used to begin to launch initiatives addressing all the "other stuff" that we so often let become the main stuff.
Our family once bought one of the first homes being built in a new subdivision in a fast growing suburb outside Tulsa, a place where people were rushing to get to and to build and to sell us stuff, eager to become like all the other similar places outside the edges of the city. A place of safety and convenience and some "coolness." Three years later we sold it and moved here into a $28,000 house. It was apparently such a radical thing to do that the bank made us prove that we were actually buying the home to live in, because it had been abandoned for a few years, not for rent or much of the time for sale.
But here, as we told the medical students, not only were we returning to our roots (even though the place had changed much over the ensuing almost forty years) and that is always a spiritually fulfilling thing to do, and not only were we moving close to family (which as opposed to what we taught ourselves as a culture in the 50s 60s and beyond is in fact a healthy thing to do) and back into the very house and yard my wife was reared in and where she lived when we married, and we were able to embark on an ongoing project to save and restore and transform it, but we loved...
...being in an edge community of urban, rural and small town intermingling, of great diversity of ethnicity (for our Oklahoma area anyway), where city buses and a diversity of races on horseback and foot traffic all can be experienced (though not an intentional walkable community)
...being fairly close to the developing downtown, and to outlying lakes and parks, where here people fish in the ponds of golf courses, and zoo, including the animals in the front yards kind of personal zoos with pigs and donkeys and goats getting loose and reminding you "life will out" and not be kept in a box, and close to the airport, and little places where you can go park and lay on your carhood and watch the airplanes come in over you for landing.
...being up close and personal with Turley Hill and with the prairie of Osage County nearby, of still not too light polluted skies.
...being able to grow a native plant yard or to plant where we want to what we want to create a natural habitat landscape without having to worry about anti-ecological and anti-sustainable and anti-community building covenants
...being able to have resources go soooo much further here, enabling a track of financial security easier at same time as being able to make money go so much further through having more means to contribute to causes and people and to create community, to be able to live a little more easily an "other-centered" life, a prerequisite of a fulfilling life.
,,,being able to meet such a range of people with experiences, and to encounter "great characters" or to become one.
...being in a culture where people know that they have to rely on themselves but can't go it alone and so they are ironically then more open to helping others just as a matter of doing what needs doing; where there isn't a culture of turning to professionals or experts to take care of matters and so a culture of learning from one another, sharing resources, is born.
...being able as a matter of course and simple partnerships to address or broach the matter of racial reconciliation instead of so easily putting it off for the next agenda, and perhaps most importantly, for when you don't do it you can't so easily hide from it...for the deep growth of the soul that comes from being, in my case, a member of the overall dominant ethnicity elsewhere but here to be in the minority, especially as our state by the year 2014 will be a state made up entirely of minorities, with no one ethnicity a majority one, so that term will lose its traditional meaning.
...being able to jump right in and be a leader, and work with other leaders, to come up with crazy dreams without having to work the system that is set up to kill the dreams that are birthed.
...being able to get to know the small business owners and support them and support a more just economic structure.
...being able to not so easily slip into like-minded groups and so to know and at least get a glimpse into what communities of service and real loving freedom extended to one another in covenant are all about, that Great Experiment (no one said it would be easy or should be) that both our nation founders and further back the followers of Jesus sought to incarnate.
...and conversely when you do :) find like-minded folks willing to walk this walk with you then you are ever so grateful and mindful of the gift others are.
...finally, for me, I said, speaking for myself in the language of my faith, it is here that I can best meet and walk with Jesus, and that is no small thing, it is the ultimate thing, though realized in all the small things.
...
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2010/07/church-of-small-blessings-or-report-on.html
Part One focused on our talk this summer with medical and other students in a special summer class that came to visit, and specifically about the cumulation of the unjust "little things", and the breakdown of the bigger social fabric, that together create an abandoned place of Empire here, about why the need is great, and one of the major reasons why we choose to live here.
But there was more, a significant "rest of the story" to what we told them, and it is mostly about why we live here, what is so wonderful about living here that brought us here and keeps us here when we have the means to live pretty much anywhere. About why we sometimes feel like a small community of realtors for our area trying to let loose the best kept secret of the quality of life in this northern edge of the Tulsa community. Maybe it is an example of that somewhat eternally perplexing in its simplicity statement that Jesus made that has resonated down through the millenia when he said, scandalously, "Blessed are the poor."
Three years ago when we began our missional transformation and began to hold community talks and forums listening to people in the area, we definitely heard about all those things that are in part one, but that was only after beginning with the initial focus on the strengths of our area, our lives; about the spirit and stories of the place and the people that define us from the grassroots level moreso than do the statistics and the stereotypes that even we so often fall back into using as our default mode. Actually once they got a chance to open up about the things they like about living here there was almost no stopping them; they were so used to community forums being about protests, about what was wrong, about blaming, about trying to get others to do something we felt needed to be done, that once a safe space was created for the pent up positives to emerge, a strong energy was unleashed that was then used to begin to launch initiatives addressing all the "other stuff" that we so often let become the main stuff.
Our family once bought one of the first homes being built in a new subdivision in a fast growing suburb outside Tulsa, a place where people were rushing to get to and to build and to sell us stuff, eager to become like all the other similar places outside the edges of the city. A place of safety and convenience and some "coolness." Three years later we sold it and moved here into a $28,000 house. It was apparently such a radical thing to do that the bank made us prove that we were actually buying the home to live in, because it had been abandoned for a few years, not for rent or much of the time for sale.
But here, as we told the medical students, not only were we returning to our roots (even though the place had changed much over the ensuing almost forty years) and that is always a spiritually fulfilling thing to do, and not only were we moving close to family (which as opposed to what we taught ourselves as a culture in the 50s 60s and beyond is in fact a healthy thing to do) and back into the very house and yard my wife was reared in and where she lived when we married, and we were able to embark on an ongoing project to save and restore and transform it, but we loved...
...being in an edge community of urban, rural and small town intermingling, of great diversity of ethnicity (for our Oklahoma area anyway), where city buses and a diversity of races on horseback and foot traffic all can be experienced (though not an intentional walkable community)
...being fairly close to the developing downtown, and to outlying lakes and parks, where here people fish in the ponds of golf courses, and zoo, including the animals in the front yards kind of personal zoos with pigs and donkeys and goats getting loose and reminding you "life will out" and not be kept in a box, and close to the airport, and little places where you can go park and lay on your carhood and watch the airplanes come in over you for landing.
...being up close and personal with Turley Hill and with the prairie of Osage County nearby, of still not too light polluted skies.
...being able to grow a native plant yard or to plant where we want to what we want to create a natural habitat landscape without having to worry about anti-ecological and anti-sustainable and anti-community building covenants
...being able to have resources go soooo much further here, enabling a track of financial security easier at same time as being able to make money go so much further through having more means to contribute to causes and people and to create community, to be able to live a little more easily an "other-centered" life, a prerequisite of a fulfilling life.
,,,being able to meet such a range of people with experiences, and to encounter "great characters" or to become one.
...being in a culture where people know that they have to rely on themselves but can't go it alone and so they are ironically then more open to helping others just as a matter of doing what needs doing; where there isn't a culture of turning to professionals or experts to take care of matters and so a culture of learning from one another, sharing resources, is born.
...being able as a matter of course and simple partnerships to address or broach the matter of racial reconciliation instead of so easily putting it off for the next agenda, and perhaps most importantly, for when you don't do it you can't so easily hide from it...for the deep growth of the soul that comes from being, in my case, a member of the overall dominant ethnicity elsewhere but here to be in the minority, especially as our state by the year 2014 will be a state made up entirely of minorities, with no one ethnicity a majority one, so that term will lose its traditional meaning.
...being able to jump right in and be a leader, and work with other leaders, to come up with crazy dreams without having to work the system that is set up to kill the dreams that are birthed.
...being able to get to know the small business owners and support them and support a more just economic structure.
...being able to not so easily slip into like-minded groups and so to know and at least get a glimpse into what communities of service and real loving freedom extended to one another in covenant are all about, that Great Experiment (no one said it would be easy or should be) that both our nation founders and further back the followers of Jesus sought to incarnate.
...and conversely when you do :) find like-minded folks willing to walk this walk with you then you are ever so grateful and mindful of the gift others are.
...finally, for me, I said, speaking for myself in the language of my faith, it is here that I can best meet and walk with Jesus, and that is no small thing, it is the ultimate thing, though realized in all the small things.
...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Disruptive Innovation For Real Community Health: Using the Incarnational Missional Model of Church For Other Community Organizing
A radical good idea has legs, has wings, will organically adapt and be transforming in other systems. "Disruptive Innovation" "Turning Your Organization/Institution Inside Out" "Creating Discontinuity With The Past" "Moving From Attractional To Incarnational" is something where the lessons of the church can help effect great change in society, not so much by what the church does sometimes, but by others adopting this emerging/ancient model of the church.
The project we are working on with OU and others in the Tulsa area around the concept of "lay health advocates or advisors" does to "the clinic" what we have shown here we can do for the church; turn it inside out, make it missional and not institutional, in order to do a better, more sustainable, job of creating healthy communities and lives.
The money that is spent on creating clinics with professional trained staff, and with a single building and equipment all in one place, where people have to come to, at a particular time, to be seen in a one on one basis (in fact where several staff dedicate themselves to a single individual, and then another single individual, etc.) based on fees for service that are based on a taxonomy of individual diagnoses, is all way past being sustainable, or especially for poor and broken communities the system does not work and way too often by its inherent nature makes health worse. For one thing, it takes the individual out of their home and neighborhood and treats them all alike based on an arbitrary standard; by doing so it not only forgets that the community is vital to the health of the person, but can undercut what the community might be providing. It is hierarchical, based too often on a knowledge-based instead of ignorance-based system (see Wes Jackson, see Wendell Berry, see the BP gulf oil spill).
The current health care delivery system, even in poor communities where health clinics are set up, perpetuate all this. In our area, it is good that we have a clinic; we hate that funds have been cut here where it is needed the most and so we have fewer staff and barely holding on to a clinic whereas the same community based clinics are thriving in other parts of the city where there are more insured to help feed into the system. But, even putting clinics in places where there havent been before and where they are sorely and surely needed, doesn't alter the situation above; the clinics themselves are still not as community and other-geared as they need to be to be radically disruptively innovative for our times.
All that I have written about health clinics has been written about systems of churches. The clinic is modernity incarnate at a time when culture has become postmodern; the values of the modern era work against completing mission in the postmodern era, an era that values all the opposites of what I described above, that values relationship, organic, sustainable, tribal, group over individual, the local, the unique, the egalitarian, experience over knowledge for its own sake, participation vs patients as spectators passive and silent, visual and story based and imagistic over print, and communal over individual; in other words the EPIC approach written about particularly by Leonard Sweet, and fleshed out by many other church analysts.
The health clinic today is too often at heart still like that telephone of the 1950s: one size, one shape, one color, attached to one place on the wall and to use it you had to go to it, and tethered by one wire, and with one function, and slow to use, and requiring a bigger and bigger phone directory in order to use it well. But today's "phone" is of course not like any of that at all; they are also by being connected online and with their own storage capabilities their own directories so you don't need the printed ones anymore.
There are multiple ways to turn the clinic incarnational and more like the "phone" of tomorrow than the phone of yesterday, same with the church; one of the ways we are moving toward is to create a system of paid community health advocates; they would be connected to the "clinicians" at the campus, for example, who would help them with the health care info and delivery, but they themselves would be teachers of the clinicians, and carriers to them about the community part of community health. They would be paid to be kind of like "Master Gardeners" in an area, but would be more like "Master Patients" as they would be able to help teach people how to interact better with their care providers, and teach the care providers how to do the same; they could adopt much of the "see one, do one, teach one" concept to become forms of health care providers themselves, learning in some cases how to do the basic kinds of things that family members are taught to do to help others in their families. They would become kind of like extended family for the community.
They would be community gatherers to help bring health care information and care to whole communities; perhaps each month working to focus on different health care topics in their neighborhoods through many different places where people naturally gather: stores, churches, parks, schools, etc. Go to them rather than trying to spend money to get them to come to the clinic. They would be paid, part time at first, and drawing from people with strong ties in the communities; they would live in the communities, unlike most professionals who might even serve in a poor community but live elsewhere.
And they would be witnesses for their neighbors; they would be paid in part to see what is happening in their communities that affects the health of those around them, including the environmental problems of houses and the areas, noticing where environmental injustice is linked with economic injustice, with issues of classism and racism and ageism and other ways that people have their health affected and their abilities discouraged to grow healthier. And they would pay attention to the other vital people in the communities who are resources for health, who even though they aren't paid, still have information and skills and experiences that can be tapped; they would be able to connect people in need up with others who can help them right near them, and notice that even those in need of health care can be givers of it too, and help in community to make that more visible.
Imagine every neighborhood designated area in north and west Tulsa and the adjacent underserved areas with three paid part time lay health advocates working together in their own neighborhoods organizing for health. I would take that over the re-establishment of the traditional clinic model, though I would prefer to have them working in conjunction with one another; wouldn't that be a novel approach, to actually favor an abandoned place as the place where this great experiment is conducted, and where resources for both traditional clinics and the incarnational health networks are put into practice. Imagine even the economic resources that would come in dollars going into these neighborhoods simply through the investment of dollars in several very local people instead of going into the pockets of a few who live elsewhere.
This is the vision that came out of a brainstorming session a couple of years ago at A Third Place Center, and it went underground as we moved onto other projects, but it was germinating, and now that the health delivery is at an even more crisis point with the closing of clinics in the areas that need them the most, when folks are looking for a truly different approach, our good idea rises again.
New meetings are underway; grants are being explored; concepts are taking shape and skeletons are beginning to get fleshed out. Whatever happens, there is no turning back; that's the way of taking "the red pill" of incarnational, missional thought; it takes hold and is not limited to one sphere or the other, to something called church but not to other organization and endeavors. To think it can be is to think in a modern way. And that's not a good way.
True, I am married to a doctor; we have been journeying in these joint waters for some time comparing worlds; she is also an organic native garden planter and artist and builder; being, as MLK said, "creatively maladjusted" to the way things are has been our way of life in many walks of life. This comes naturally to me. We also know by experience that transformations of this major kind do not come easy, but truly it is going to become harder and harder to live and work according to the rules of the world gone by; the more sustainable, local decentralized way is going with the grain of the emerging cultures; the problem is that we are still operating and functionally in more than one worldview, modern and postmodern/organic/quantum/ancientfuture whichever word you want to use.
Just as all things that change the world start with a small group of people working together, some of the biggest changes come from the most unlikeliest of places. Nazareth meet TulsaNorth/Turley.
The project we are working on with OU and others in the Tulsa area around the concept of "lay health advocates or advisors" does to "the clinic" what we have shown here we can do for the church; turn it inside out, make it missional and not institutional, in order to do a better, more sustainable, job of creating healthy communities and lives.
The money that is spent on creating clinics with professional trained staff, and with a single building and equipment all in one place, where people have to come to, at a particular time, to be seen in a one on one basis (in fact where several staff dedicate themselves to a single individual, and then another single individual, etc.) based on fees for service that are based on a taxonomy of individual diagnoses, is all way past being sustainable, or especially for poor and broken communities the system does not work and way too often by its inherent nature makes health worse. For one thing, it takes the individual out of their home and neighborhood and treats them all alike based on an arbitrary standard; by doing so it not only forgets that the community is vital to the health of the person, but can undercut what the community might be providing. It is hierarchical, based too often on a knowledge-based instead of ignorance-based system (see Wes Jackson, see Wendell Berry, see the BP gulf oil spill).
The current health care delivery system, even in poor communities where health clinics are set up, perpetuate all this. In our area, it is good that we have a clinic; we hate that funds have been cut here where it is needed the most and so we have fewer staff and barely holding on to a clinic whereas the same community based clinics are thriving in other parts of the city where there are more insured to help feed into the system. But, even putting clinics in places where there havent been before and where they are sorely and surely needed, doesn't alter the situation above; the clinics themselves are still not as community and other-geared as they need to be to be radically disruptively innovative for our times.
All that I have written about health clinics has been written about systems of churches. The clinic is modernity incarnate at a time when culture has become postmodern; the values of the modern era work against completing mission in the postmodern era, an era that values all the opposites of what I described above, that values relationship, organic, sustainable, tribal, group over individual, the local, the unique, the egalitarian, experience over knowledge for its own sake, participation vs patients as spectators passive and silent, visual and story based and imagistic over print, and communal over individual; in other words the EPIC approach written about particularly by Leonard Sweet, and fleshed out by many other church analysts.
The health clinic today is too often at heart still like that telephone of the 1950s: one size, one shape, one color, attached to one place on the wall and to use it you had to go to it, and tethered by one wire, and with one function, and slow to use, and requiring a bigger and bigger phone directory in order to use it well. But today's "phone" is of course not like any of that at all; they are also by being connected online and with their own storage capabilities their own directories so you don't need the printed ones anymore.
There are multiple ways to turn the clinic incarnational and more like the "phone" of tomorrow than the phone of yesterday, same with the church; one of the ways we are moving toward is to create a system of paid community health advocates; they would be connected to the "clinicians" at the campus, for example, who would help them with the health care info and delivery, but they themselves would be teachers of the clinicians, and carriers to them about the community part of community health. They would be paid to be kind of like "Master Gardeners" in an area, but would be more like "Master Patients" as they would be able to help teach people how to interact better with their care providers, and teach the care providers how to do the same; they could adopt much of the "see one, do one, teach one" concept to become forms of health care providers themselves, learning in some cases how to do the basic kinds of things that family members are taught to do to help others in their families. They would become kind of like extended family for the community.
They would be community gatherers to help bring health care information and care to whole communities; perhaps each month working to focus on different health care topics in their neighborhoods through many different places where people naturally gather: stores, churches, parks, schools, etc. Go to them rather than trying to spend money to get them to come to the clinic. They would be paid, part time at first, and drawing from people with strong ties in the communities; they would live in the communities, unlike most professionals who might even serve in a poor community but live elsewhere.
And they would be witnesses for their neighbors; they would be paid in part to see what is happening in their communities that affects the health of those around them, including the environmental problems of houses and the areas, noticing where environmental injustice is linked with economic injustice, with issues of classism and racism and ageism and other ways that people have their health affected and their abilities discouraged to grow healthier. And they would pay attention to the other vital people in the communities who are resources for health, who even though they aren't paid, still have information and skills and experiences that can be tapped; they would be able to connect people in need up with others who can help them right near them, and notice that even those in need of health care can be givers of it too, and help in community to make that more visible.
Imagine every neighborhood designated area in north and west Tulsa and the adjacent underserved areas with three paid part time lay health advocates working together in their own neighborhoods organizing for health. I would take that over the re-establishment of the traditional clinic model, though I would prefer to have them working in conjunction with one another; wouldn't that be a novel approach, to actually favor an abandoned place as the place where this great experiment is conducted, and where resources for both traditional clinics and the incarnational health networks are put into practice. Imagine even the economic resources that would come in dollars going into these neighborhoods simply through the investment of dollars in several very local people instead of going into the pockets of a few who live elsewhere.
This is the vision that came out of a brainstorming session a couple of years ago at A Third Place Center, and it went underground as we moved onto other projects, but it was germinating, and now that the health delivery is at an even more crisis point with the closing of clinics in the areas that need them the most, when folks are looking for a truly different approach, our good idea rises again.
New meetings are underway; grants are being explored; concepts are taking shape and skeletons are beginning to get fleshed out. Whatever happens, there is no turning back; that's the way of taking "the red pill" of incarnational, missional thought; it takes hold and is not limited to one sphere or the other, to something called church but not to other organization and endeavors. To think it can be is to think in a modern way. And that's not a good way.
True, I am married to a doctor; we have been journeying in these joint waters for some time comparing worlds; she is also an organic native garden planter and artist and builder; being, as MLK said, "creatively maladjusted" to the way things are has been our way of life in many walks of life. This comes naturally to me. We also know by experience that transformations of this major kind do not come easy, but truly it is going to become harder and harder to live and work according to the rules of the world gone by; the more sustainable, local decentralized way is going with the grain of the emerging cultures; the problem is that we are still operating and functionally in more than one worldview, modern and postmodern/organic/quantum/ancientfuture whichever word you want to use.
Just as all things that change the world start with a small group of people working together, some of the biggest changes come from the most unlikeliest of places. Nazareth meet TulsaNorth/Turley.
Images
Here is a link to a few images at a third place, that signal community and hospitality, visual seeds of our mission.
http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/08/images-at-third-place.html
http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/08/images-at-third-place.html
Friday, August 20, 2010
Revival/Retreat 2010 Program Bios and more: Early Registration Discount Ends Sept. 19
Here are bios for most of the Revival/Retreat 2010 presenters for the event to be held Oct. 14-17 at Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, TX, with a mini-revival registration for Friday night lecture and events and all day Saturday events.
Go to this link http://www.uuchristian.org/revival/Program.html and while you are there look at all the event information, schedule, keynotes, lodging, etc. And check back as more presenters and more information will be put up as we draw nearer.
And share this post with others in your networks and email lists.
Go to this link http://www.uuchristian.org/revival/Program.html and while you are there look at all the event information, schedule, keynotes, lodging, etc. And check back as more presenters and more information will be put up as we draw nearer.
And share this post with others in your networks and email lists.
In Prayer
Hi all. First, thank you. Secondly, thank you. And lastly, thank you. We do need your help right now. This is a final appeal for help for our Miracle Among The Ruins project in our community. We have come so far, but still have a final push before our Aug. 31 closing deadline. I am going to write a few words below you can pass on to others in your networks, but for videos and more indepth plans and discussion you can go or send folks to http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/08/miracle-among-ruins-needs-you-link-of.html. And again, thank you, if you have already given and sometimes given twice, if you have passed things on before, or if you haven't yet or just now getting to it, or just have decided not to this time, thank you still. What a summer it has been.
I have decided to spend most of my effort in these final days in prayer for the people in our area, and for our project, and for the grace to know that if this is a "God-thing" and not a "my thing" or even "our thing" it will happen, and if not, then the "God-thing" will be to listen and to learn and to discern and to live the truth of the parable of the sower of seeds. But as I go into a time of prayer, in part remembering that it was a year ago this month that I had my heart attack and so my prayer time is also setting aside time to reflect back on all of this amazing last year, I still want to write one more update that you can share with others.
On August 31 we have a closing date set to purchase if the funds come in the acre of land on North Johnstown, twelve city lots on a city block, here in our area to transform abandoned rundown properties and eyesore, past which children and families walk to school and more than a mile and back to grocery store and other stores in our area, to turn it into a community building garden, kitchen, and park space. Here where nothing new has started for years on this scale, nothing since our community center started, and nothing new since OU started partnering with us. We call it the Miracle Among The Ruins, and it will be. We have Tulsa County agreeing to remove the houses and structures and clearing the property for us, once we purchase it. We have volunteers ready to transform it. But first we must be able to buy it.
The miracle I think will be to raise the final $3,000 we still need by then. LOL. Then watch that miracle create an even bigger one, as we turn around this zipcode having the lowest life expectancy in the Tulsa area, fourteen years lower than just a few miles south of us on the same street. So much has been going the wrong way for our people and our area; the latest is the loss of science teachers in the northside elementary schools; the cutback in July of the health clinics in our area (we are the only OU clinic left on the north side and we have been cut back to one morning a week) right where we have this highest health need. And between May 1 and July 31 alone there have been 311 shootings, 311, 311, in and near our area, not counting the ones that are not reported to police. We need this project now.
Now we need your help to raise the final $3,000 toward this project by Aug. 31. We need three people or groups of people, like a class or church or civic groups, who can give $1000 each to the project; or six to give $500, or twelve to give $250 or just 30 to give $100. Preferably some combination of the above. Give in honor of someone who stood for justice, that inspired you, and they will be included in honor at the site. Don't think someone else will so you don't have to; we have been trying to raise funds since March and we know this isn't so. Don't wait; donate. It is easy and safe to donate online; you don't need paypal to donate; just go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and click on the donate button; or send checks made out to A Third Place to 6514 N. Peoria Ave. Turley, OK 74126.
Now we need your help to donate and to let your networks of colleagues, alumni, family and friends know you donated and ask them to do so also.
The money we have been trying to raise since March is "just" $15,000 but that is in itself more than the average per capita income in our service area; it is also three fourths of our volunteer group's annual budget, 100 percent goes into mission.
I know this isn't always easy to do, not only to give but to pass on our project to others; I would much rather have been working in the community for all the hours I have spent trying to raise these funds. But I keep thinking, and seeing, the kids and families pushing grocery carts up the hill by this property on their way to and from home, and with school starting up again I want to give them something different to walk by and be inspired by.
We have so many seeds being sown right now; I could have used this space to tell you all about the projects small and big, like diversity movie nights, Saturday lunches, the veterans of diverse communities project, community partnerships and projects, about that revolutionary health concept of creating neighborhood lay health associates in all the culdesacs and deadends here, an idea that was born here and is catching vision across our community, the gardening at schools and wherever we can find an ugly spot, the constant problem with the landfill and trash and our cleanup efforts, the expansion of our food justice center, or about the inspirational Sunday morning gatherings as we relax, worship, talk, watch movies, pray, sing, in groups of two or more, barely two or more sometimes, putting our lives together for the greater Life of which we are a part, everlastingly. To get more on all that and all that I have forgotten to mention go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com or to my revronrobinson facebook page. Right now, I wanted to focus one last time on the Miracle Among The Ruins. I hope you will too.
I have decided to spend most of my effort in these final days in prayer for the people in our area, and for our project, and for the grace to know that if this is a "God-thing" and not a "my thing" or even "our thing" it will happen, and if not, then the "God-thing" will be to listen and to learn and to discern and to live the truth of the parable of the sower of seeds. But as I go into a time of prayer, in part remembering that it was a year ago this month that I had my heart attack and so my prayer time is also setting aside time to reflect back on all of this amazing last year, I still want to write one more update that you can share with others.
On August 31 we have a closing date set to purchase if the funds come in the acre of land on North Johnstown, twelve city lots on a city block, here in our area to transform abandoned rundown properties and eyesore, past which children and families walk to school and more than a mile and back to grocery store and other stores in our area, to turn it into a community building garden, kitchen, and park space. Here where nothing new has started for years on this scale, nothing since our community center started, and nothing new since OU started partnering with us. We call it the Miracle Among The Ruins, and it will be. We have Tulsa County agreeing to remove the houses and structures and clearing the property for us, once we purchase it. We have volunteers ready to transform it. But first we must be able to buy it.
The miracle I think will be to raise the final $3,000 we still need by then. LOL. Then watch that miracle create an even bigger one, as we turn around this zipcode having the lowest life expectancy in the Tulsa area, fourteen years lower than just a few miles south of us on the same street. So much has been going the wrong way for our people and our area; the latest is the loss of science teachers in the northside elementary schools; the cutback in July of the health clinics in our area (we are the only OU clinic left on the north side and we have been cut back to one morning a week) right where we have this highest health need. And between May 1 and July 31 alone there have been 311 shootings, 311, 311, in and near our area, not counting the ones that are not reported to police. We need this project now.
Now we need your help to raise the final $3,000 toward this project by Aug. 31. We need three people or groups of people, like a class or church or civic groups, who can give $1000 each to the project; or six to give $500, or twelve to give $250 or just 30 to give $100. Preferably some combination of the above. Give in honor of someone who stood for justice, that inspired you, and they will be included in honor at the site. Don't think someone else will so you don't have to; we have been trying to raise funds since March and we know this isn't so. Don't wait; donate. It is easy and safe to donate online; you don't need paypal to donate; just go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and click on the donate button; or send checks made out to A Third Place to 6514 N. Peoria Ave. Turley, OK 74126.
Now we need your help to donate and to let your networks of colleagues, alumni, family and friends know you donated and ask them to do so also.
The money we have been trying to raise since March is "just" $15,000 but that is in itself more than the average per capita income in our service area; it is also three fourths of our volunteer group's annual budget, 100 percent goes into mission.
I know this isn't always easy to do, not only to give but to pass on our project to others; I would much rather have been working in the community for all the hours I have spent trying to raise these funds. But I keep thinking, and seeing, the kids and families pushing grocery carts up the hill by this property on their way to and from home, and with school starting up again I want to give them something different to walk by and be inspired by.
We have so many seeds being sown right now; I could have used this space to tell you all about the projects small and big, like diversity movie nights, Saturday lunches, the veterans of diverse communities project, community partnerships and projects, about that revolutionary health concept of creating neighborhood lay health associates in all the culdesacs and deadends here, an idea that was born here and is catching vision across our community, the gardening at schools and wherever we can find an ugly spot, the constant problem with the landfill and trash and our cleanup efforts, the expansion of our food justice center, or about the inspirational Sunday morning gatherings as we relax, worship, talk, watch movies, pray, sing, in groups of two or more, barely two or more sometimes, putting our lives together for the greater Life of which we are a part, everlastingly. To get more on all that and all that I have forgotten to mention go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com or to my revronrobinson facebook page. Right now, I wanted to focus one last time on the Miracle Among The Ruins. I hope you will too.
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Church Has Left The Building...and the T-shirt
Good missional stuff here http://networkedblogs.com/6VqpR
Rev. Sean's post includes a link and a recommendation about our ministry here, and about our current project need for the Miracle Among The Ruins and our deadline for raising funds for it and a link where you can go find out more and be a part of the amazing dream.
Much of it references back to work that the Episcopal Church is doing in various parishes to become more missional, more incarnational and less attraction oriented.
There is a line to cross though that many churches won't or can't or decide not to cross in the movement along the spectrum from churched culture church to missional community of faith. And they don't have to in order to be a church making a difference. That line is at the foundational question of why one becomes missional: is it just another program at trying to get more members, more baptisms, at getting the church noticed but in a newer way than before?
Is the ultimate goal, for example, to get Unitarian Universalism more noticed and in the consciousness of people, and/or to get more Unitarian Universalists, or Episcopalians, or xyz, to identify as such, and support our churches? Do we build a food pantry and food justice center so people will say look at what the UUs are doing? That's okay, by the way, and we probably need folks to do that, IF, IF, we also have a people at the far end of the missional spectrum who realize the mission is not to make more UUs by name and identity and number, or to get xyz church or the association name more widely known, but to create a world that more openly has embedded in it our values; and who know that sometimes the way to accomplish that mission is to actually empty one's self of the attachment to one's particular group identity, especially if it might be working against the mission itself.
The church doesn't leave the building in order to get more church members into the building on Sunday; the church leaves the building in order to become the church.
Side note: Many kudos to all who help protest various events, issues, etc. by wearing tshirts that identify them as being in a particular religious affiliation, but I wonder sometimes if that doesn't draw attention to them and the faith community instead of to the people and issue at hand? Were there tshirts like that at Selma? I don't recall any. Perhaps. I remember people as people standing together. It isn't a big deal I know; probably lots of good reasons to do so, and it might just be a matter of personality; or it might be that we carry our message-driven print and identity obsessed culture with us wherever we go; even when we are working with and for others we have to stand out as us. And then it becomes about us, and showing what we stand for, and that feeds into the culture that makes it hard to do the radical, red pill taking, missional transformation. This might be one of those cases when it is definitely a losing battle, though, and it is so post-modern to brand one's self with tshirts, the ink and body art extension of a group identity, that the fact it subtly works against missional approaches will not be able to stop the usage, unless there is already a missional subversion at work, especially by the young, in response to the whole pomo cultural revolution.
We need all kinds of churches taking all kinds of approaches to being church, but we have so few on the missional end that we need to spend some time and energy here for a while; we need a few more churches doing like what the churches in the article linked to do---sell their building, break up into smaller missional churches, and go forth and multiply.
Rev. Sean's post includes a link and a recommendation about our ministry here, and about our current project need for the Miracle Among The Ruins and our deadline for raising funds for it and a link where you can go find out more and be a part of the amazing dream.
Much of it references back to work that the Episcopal Church is doing in various parishes to become more missional, more incarnational and less attraction oriented.
There is a line to cross though that many churches won't or can't or decide not to cross in the movement along the spectrum from churched culture church to missional community of faith. And they don't have to in order to be a church making a difference. That line is at the foundational question of why one becomes missional: is it just another program at trying to get more members, more baptisms, at getting the church noticed but in a newer way than before?
Is the ultimate goal, for example, to get Unitarian Universalism more noticed and in the consciousness of people, and/or to get more Unitarian Universalists, or Episcopalians, or xyz, to identify as such, and support our churches? Do we build a food pantry and food justice center so people will say look at what the UUs are doing? That's okay, by the way, and we probably need folks to do that, IF, IF, we also have a people at the far end of the missional spectrum who realize the mission is not to make more UUs by name and identity and number, or to get xyz church or the association name more widely known, but to create a world that more openly has embedded in it our values; and who know that sometimes the way to accomplish that mission is to actually empty one's self of the attachment to one's particular group identity, especially if it might be working against the mission itself.
The church doesn't leave the building in order to get more church members into the building on Sunday; the church leaves the building in order to become the church.
Side note: Many kudos to all who help protest various events, issues, etc. by wearing tshirts that identify them as being in a particular religious affiliation, but I wonder sometimes if that doesn't draw attention to them and the faith community instead of to the people and issue at hand? Were there tshirts like that at Selma? I don't recall any. Perhaps. I remember people as people standing together. It isn't a big deal I know; probably lots of good reasons to do so, and it might just be a matter of personality; or it might be that we carry our message-driven print and identity obsessed culture with us wherever we go; even when we are working with and for others we have to stand out as us. And then it becomes about us, and showing what we stand for, and that feeds into the culture that makes it hard to do the radical, red pill taking, missional transformation. This might be one of those cases when it is definitely a losing battle, though, and it is so post-modern to brand one's self with tshirts, the ink and body art extension of a group identity, that the fact it subtly works against missional approaches will not be able to stop the usage, unless there is already a missional subversion at work, especially by the young, in response to the whole pomo cultural revolution.
We need all kinds of churches taking all kinds of approaches to being church, but we have so few on the missional end that we need to spend some time and energy here for a while; we need a few more churches doing like what the churches in the article linked to do---sell their building, break up into smaller missional churches, and go forth and multiply.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Join These People at Revival/Retreat 2010 in Dallas Area Oct. 14-17
Hi all. Come join with the following people who will be at Revival/Retreat 2010: Oct. 14-17, (with Friday and Saturday registration available for those unable to come Thurs through Sunday). Horizon UU Church, Carrollton, TX
We have wonderful presenters of lectures, workshops, and worships that will make Revival a truly transforming experience for you and for all of us. Get all the details and register online while early discount is available (until Sept. 19) at www.uuchristian.org/revival. See this lineup:
Keynote Lecturers: Dr. Brandon Scott and Rev. John Buehrens.
Brandon is a leading scholar of the parables of Jesus, a founding fellow of the Jesus Seminar, distinguished professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary, author of Hear Then The Parable, Reimagining The World, Biblical Stories and Hollywood Dreams, Jesus The Symbol Maker, Sound Mapping the New Testament, and others, with a major work on Reimagining the Resurrection due out this October. He is a commentator on the historical Jesus on the DVD curriculums by www.livingthequestions.com.
John is past president of the UUA, pastor of UU churches in Knoxville, Dallas, New York, and now Needham, MA. He is author or co-author of Our Chosen Faith, Understanding the Bible, and the new A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the 21st Century, and has taught at seminaries and been active in social justice and interfaith causes.
Workshop Presenters:
Dr. Ruben Habito of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University who will present a workshop on Christian Faith and Buddhist Practice. He is the president of the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies and is the author of Experiencing Buddhism: Ways of Wisdom and Compassion (Orbis Books, 2005); Living Zen, Loving God (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004); "Compassion Out of Wisdom: Buddhist Perspectives from the Past toward the Human Future," in Stephen Post, et.al., eds., Altruism and Altruistic Love (Oxford University Press, 2002); Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth (MKZC Publications, 2001); Originary Enlightenment: Tendai Hongaku Doctrine and Japenese Buddhism (International Institute for Advanced Buddhist Studies, 1996); Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges to the Church, co-edited with Don Pittman and Terry Muck (Wm. Eerdmans and Co.)
Rev. Naomi King received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and has served most recently the River of Grass UU Congregation in Florida. She was an intern minister at Horizon UU Church in Texas and has been active in the movement for sustainable agriculture on a global basis with Project Harvest Hope. She was a communion service preacher for the UUCF at General Assembly in 2006.
Rev. Thom Belote is minister of Shawnee Mission UU Church in Overland Park, Kansas and is editor of the new book "The Growing Church: Keys to Congregational Vitality. In his seven years at his church it has grown by 50 percent. He has served on the Executive Committee of the UU Ministers Association as well as an internship at Horizon UU Church in Texas, and student ministries in Needham and Boston, MA. He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard.
Rev. Lillie Mae Henley is minister of Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., an historic Universalist Christian church called the Universalist National Cathedral when it was built. She received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and was minister of Westside UU Church in Fort Worth and served as interim in three other UU congregations. She has served on the Board of the UUCF and was the Revival communion preacher in 2009.
Rev. Dennis Hamilton is minister of the host church Horizon in Carrolton, Texas. He is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry and was Horizon's first minister as part of the UUA extension ministry program. He has been a leader in the Southwest UU Conference and UU Musicians Network serving on the task force that developed the new hymnal supplement Singing The Journey.
Rev. Ron Robinson has been Executive Director of the UUCF since 2003 and is a missional church planter in the northside of Tulsa, OK with A Third Place Community, and serves as Director of Ministerial Formation and part time faculty at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa where he received his Masters of Divinity. He has been a hospice chaplain, student minister in Bartlesville, OK, intern minister at All Souls Church in Tulsa, and started the UU Congregation of Tahlequah, OK.
We will also have a leader guiding us in a three hour Centering Prayer workshop to begin the event on Thursday Oct. 14 in the afternoon. We will update on who that person will be.
Worship team leader for Revival is the Rev. Tony Lorenzen of Pathways UU Church in Southlake, TX, who is a member of the UUCF Board of Directors and was an intern minister at First Parish in Weston, He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard and also served with the First Parish Church in Billerica, MA.
Worship Leaders will include:
Opening Worship with multi church choir and presented by ministers from the Dallas Fort Worth area
Taize Worship with the Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, program minister of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City who has also served as the District Growth minister of the Southwestern Conference and at James Reeb UU Church, a new congregation start in Madison, WI. She has been president of the national Interweave organization. She was the prayer and healing service preacher at Revival 2009 and presented the Sunset Talks at the 2009 Southwest UU Summer Institute.
Communion and Baptism worship will be led by the Rev. Thomas D. Wintle who is senior minister at First Parish Church in Weston, MA. He previously served with the First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster, MA, and as Executive Director of the UUCF. For thirty years he has been editor of the UU Christian Journal. He received his Doctorate from Chicago Theological Seminary affiliated with the University of Chicago.
Prayer and Healing Service will be led by the Rev. David Owen O'Quill founding pastor of Micah's Porch Community Church in Chicago. He is a graduate of Meadville Lombard and has served at the UU Church in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Daily Office morning and evening prayer will be led by the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Spencer, who has served UU churches in Danbury, CT and Weston, MA, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. She holds a law degree from Boston University and theological degrees from Harvard and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.
Small Group Leader again this year will be the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger of the Greater Unitarian Universalist church in New Orleans, who has previously served churches in New Jersey and Tennessee and New Zealand and is a past president of the UUCF and preacher at Revivals in the past. She received her theological degree from Loyola Institute of Ministry.
blessings, Ron Robinson
Turley, OK
please pass this on to your church and your district or cluster email lists, to your social network sites, to your newsletter editor, to colleagues, friends, family in your area both UU and others.
We have wonderful presenters of lectures, workshops, and worships that will make Revival a truly transforming experience for you and for all of us. Get all the details and register online while early discount is available (until Sept. 19) at www.uuchristian.org/revival. See this lineup:
Keynote Lecturers: Dr. Brandon Scott and Rev. John Buehrens.
Brandon is a leading scholar of the parables of Jesus, a founding fellow of the Jesus Seminar, distinguished professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary, author of Hear Then The Parable, Reimagining The World, Biblical Stories and Hollywood Dreams, Jesus The Symbol Maker, Sound Mapping the New Testament, and others, with a major work on Reimagining the Resurrection due out this October. He is a commentator on the historical Jesus on the DVD curriculums by www.livingthequestions.com.
John is past president of the UUA, pastor of UU churches in Knoxville, Dallas, New York, and now Needham, MA. He is author or co-author of Our Chosen Faith, Understanding the Bible, and the new A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the 21st Century, and has taught at seminaries and been active in social justice and interfaith causes.
Workshop Presenters:
Dr. Ruben Habito of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University who will present a workshop on Christian Faith and Buddhist Practice. He is the president of the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies and is the author of Experiencing Buddhism: Ways of Wisdom and Compassion (Orbis Books, 2005); Living Zen, Loving God (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004); "Compassion Out of Wisdom: Buddhist Perspectives from the Past toward the Human Future," in Stephen Post, et.al., eds., Altruism and Altruistic Love (Oxford University Press, 2002); Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth (MKZC Publications, 2001); Originary Enlightenment: Tendai Hongaku Doctrine and Japenese Buddhism (International Institute for Advanced Buddhist Studies, 1996); Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges to the Church, co-edited with Don Pittman and Terry Muck (Wm. Eerdmans and Co.)
Rev. Naomi King received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and has served most recently the River of Grass UU Congregation in Florida. She was an intern minister at Horizon UU Church in Texas and has been active in the movement for sustainable agriculture on a global basis with Project Harvest Hope. She was a communion service preacher for the UUCF at General Assembly in 2006.
Rev. Thom Belote is minister of Shawnee Mission UU Church in Overland Park, Kansas and is editor of the new book "The Growing Church: Keys to Congregational Vitality. In his seven years at his church it has grown by 50 percent. He has served on the Executive Committee of the UU Ministers Association as well as an internship at Horizon UU Church in Texas, and student ministries in Needham and Boston, MA. He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard.
Rev. Lillie Mae Henley is minister of Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., an historic Universalist Christian church called the Universalist National Cathedral when it was built. She received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and was minister of Westside UU Church in Fort Worth and served as interim in three other UU congregations. She has served on the Board of the UUCF and was the Revival communion preacher in 2009.
Rev. Dennis Hamilton is minister of the host church Horizon in Carrolton, Texas. He is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry and was Horizon's first minister as part of the UUA extension ministry program. He has been a leader in the Southwest UU Conference and UU Musicians Network serving on the task force that developed the new hymnal supplement Singing The Journey.
Rev. Ron Robinson has been Executive Director of the UUCF since 2003 and is a missional church planter in the northside of Tulsa, OK with A Third Place Community, and serves as Director of Ministerial Formation and part time faculty at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa where he received his Masters of Divinity. He has been a hospice chaplain, student minister in Bartlesville, OK, intern minister at All Souls Church in Tulsa, and started the UU Congregation of Tahlequah, OK.
We will also have a leader guiding us in a three hour Centering Prayer workshop to begin the event on Thursday Oct. 14 in the afternoon. We will update on who that person will be.
Worship team leader for Revival is the Rev. Tony Lorenzen of Pathways UU Church in Southlake, TX, who is a member of the UUCF Board of Directors and was an intern minister at First Parish in Weston, He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard and also served with the First Parish Church in Billerica, MA.
Worship Leaders will include:
Opening Worship with multi church choir and presented by ministers from the Dallas Fort Worth area
Taize Worship with the Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, program minister of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City who has also served as the District Growth minister of the Southwestern Conference and at James Reeb UU Church, a new congregation start in Madison, WI. She has been president of the national Interweave organization. She was the prayer and healing service preacher at Revival 2009 and presented the Sunset Talks at the 2009 Southwest UU Summer Institute.
Communion and Baptism worship will be led by the Rev. Thomas D. Wintle who is senior minister at First Parish Church in Weston, MA. He previously served with the First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster, MA, and as Executive Director of the UUCF. For thirty years he has been editor of the UU Christian Journal. He received his Doctorate from Chicago Theological Seminary affiliated with the University of Chicago.
Prayer and Healing Service will be led by the Rev. David Owen O'Quill founding pastor of Micah's Porch Community Church in Chicago. He is a graduate of Meadville Lombard and has served at the UU Church in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Daily Office morning and evening prayer will be led by the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Spencer, who has served UU churches in Danbury, CT and Weston, MA, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. She holds a law degree from Boston University and theological degrees from Harvard and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.
Small Group Leader again this year will be the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger of the Greater Unitarian Universalist church in New Orleans, who has previously served churches in New Jersey and Tennessee and New Zealand and is a past president of the UUCF and preacher at Revivals in the past. She received her theological degree from Loyola Institute of Ministry.
blessings, Ron Robinson
Turley, OK
please pass this on to your church and your district or cluster email lists, to your social network sites, to your newsletter editor, to colleagues, friends, family in your area both UU and others.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Look At This Lineup of Revival/Retreat Speakers and Come Join Us
Hi all. Come join with the following people who will be at Revival/Retreat 2010: Oct. 14-17, (with Friday and Saturday registration available for those unable to come Thurs through Sunday). Horizon UU Church, Carrollton, TX
We have wonderful presenters of lectures, workshops, and worships that will make Revival a truly transforming experience for you and for all of us. Get all the details and register online while early discount is available (until Sept. 19) at www.uuchristian.org/revival. See this lineup:
Keynote Lecturers: Dr. Brandon Scott and Rev. John Buehrens.
Brandon is a leading scholar of the parables of Jesus, a founding fellow of the Jesus Seminar, distinguished professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary, author of Hear Then The Parable, Reimagining The World, Biblical Stories and Hollywood Dreams, Jesus The Symbol Maker, Sound Mapping the New Testament, and others, with a major work on Reimagining the Resurrection due out this October. He is a commentator on the historical Jesus on the DVD curriculums by www.livingthequestions.com.
John is past president of the UUA, pastor of UU churches in Knoxville, Dallas, New York, and now Needham, MA. He is author or co-author of Our Chosen Faith, Understanding the Bible, and the new A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the 21st Century, and has taught at seminaries and been active in social justice and interfaith causes.
Workshop Presenters:
Dr. Ruben Habito of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University who will present a workshop on Christian Faith and Buddhist Practice. He is the president of the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies and is the author of Experiencing Buddhism: Ways of Wisdom and Compassion (Orbis Books, 2005); Living Zen, Loving God (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004); "Compassion Out of Wisdom: Buddhist Perspectives from the Past toward the Human Future," in Stephen Post, et.al., eds., Altruism and Altruistic Love (Oxford University Press, 2002); Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth (MKZC Publications, 2001); Originary Enlightenment: Tendai Hongaku Doctrine and Japenese Buddhism (International Institute for Advanced Buddhist Studies, 1996); Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges to the Church, co-edited with Don Pittman and Terry Muck (Wm. Eerdmans and Co.)
Rev. Naomi King received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and has served most recently the River of Grass UU Congregation in Florida. She was an intern minister at Horizon UU Church in Texas and has been active in the movement for sustainable agriculture on a global basis with Project Harvest Hope. She was a communion service preacher for the UUCF at General Assembly in 2006.
Rev. Thom Belote is minister of Shawnee Mission UU Church in Overland Park, Kansas and is editor of the new book "The Growing Church: Keys to Congregational Vitality. In his seven years at his church it has grown by 50 percent. He has served on the Executive Committee of the UU Ministers Association as well as an internship at Horizon UU Church in Texas, and student ministries in Needham and Boston, MA. He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard.
Rev. Lillie Mae Henley is minister of Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., an historic Universalist Christian church called the Universalist National Cathedral when it was built. She received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and was minister of Westside UU Church in Fort Worth and served as interim in three other UU congregations. She has served on the Board of the UUCF and was the Revival communion preacher in 2009.
Rev. Dennis Hamilton is minister of the host church Horizon in Carrolton, Texas. He is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry and was Horizon's first minister as part of the UUA extension ministry program. He has been a leader in the Southwest UU Conference and UU Musicians Network serving on the task force that developed the new hymnal supplement Singing The Journey.
Rev. Ron Robinson has been Executive Director of the UUCF since 2003 and is a missional church planter in the northside of Tulsa, OK with A Third Place Community, and serves as Director of Ministerial Formation and part time faculty at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa where he received his Masters of Divinity. He has been a hospice chaplain, student minister in Bartlesville, OK, intern minister at All Souls Church in Tulsa, and started the UU Congregation of Tahlequah, OK.
Worship team leader for Revival is the Rev. Tony Lorenzen of Pathways UU Church in Southlake, TX, who is a member of the UUCF Board of Directors and was an intern minister at First Parish in Weston, He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard and also served with the First Parish Church in Billerica, MA.
Worship Leaders will include:
Opening Worship with multi church choir and presented by ministers from the Dallas Fort Worth area
Taize Worship with the Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, program minister of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City who has also served as the District Growth minister of the Southwestern Conference and at James Reeb UU Church, a new congregation start in Madison, WI. She has been president of the national Interweave organization. She was the prayer and healing service preacher at Revival 2009 and presented the Sunset Talks at the 2009 Southwest UU Summer Institute.
Communion and Baptism worship will be led by the Rev. Thomas D. Wintle who is senior minister at First Parish Church in Weston, MA. He previously served with the First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster, MA, and as Executive Director of the UUCF. For thirty years he has been editor of the UU Christian Journal. He received his Doctorate from Chicago Theological Seminary affiliated with the University of Chicago.
Prayer and Healing Service will be led by the Rev. David Owen O'Quill founding pastor of Micah's Porch Community Church in Chicago. He is a graduate of Meadville Lombard and has served at the UU Church in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Daily Office morning and evening prayer will be led by the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Spencer, who has served UU churches in Danbury, CT and Weston, MA, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. She holds a law degree from Boston University and theological degrees from Harvard and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.
Small Group Leader again this year will be the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger of the Greater Unitarian Universalist church in New Orleans, who has previously served churches in New Jersey and Tennessee and New Zealand and is a past president of the UUCF and preacher at Revivals in the past. She received her theological degree from Loyola Institute of Ministry.
please pass this on to your church and your district or cluster email lists, to your social network sites, to your newsletter editor, to colleagues, friends, family in your area both UU and others. You don't have to be Christian to come and be welcomed, or to be Unitarian Universalist to come and be welcomed. We don't think Jesus would have it any other way.
We have wonderful presenters of lectures, workshops, and worships that will make Revival a truly transforming experience for you and for all of us. Get all the details and register online while early discount is available (until Sept. 19) at www.uuchristian.org/revival. See this lineup:
Keynote Lecturers: Dr. Brandon Scott and Rev. John Buehrens.
Brandon is a leading scholar of the parables of Jesus, a founding fellow of the Jesus Seminar, distinguished professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary, author of Hear Then The Parable, Reimagining The World, Biblical Stories and Hollywood Dreams, Jesus The Symbol Maker, Sound Mapping the New Testament, and others, with a major work on Reimagining the Resurrection due out this October. He is a commentator on the historical Jesus on the DVD curriculums by www.livingthequestions.com.
John is past president of the UUA, pastor of UU churches in Knoxville, Dallas, New York, and now Needham, MA. He is author or co-author of Our Chosen Faith, Understanding the Bible, and the new A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the 21st Century, and has taught at seminaries and been active in social justice and interfaith causes.
Workshop Presenters:
Dr. Ruben Habito of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University who will present a workshop on Christian Faith and Buddhist Practice. He is the president of the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies and is the author of Experiencing Buddhism: Ways of Wisdom and Compassion (Orbis Books, 2005); Living Zen, Loving God (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004); "Compassion Out of Wisdom: Buddhist Perspectives from the Past toward the Human Future," in Stephen Post, et.al., eds., Altruism and Altruistic Love (Oxford University Press, 2002); Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth (MKZC Publications, 2001); Originary Enlightenment: Tendai Hongaku Doctrine and Japenese Buddhism (International Institute for Advanced Buddhist Studies, 1996); Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges to the Church, co-edited with Don Pittman and Terry Muck (Wm. Eerdmans and Co.)
Rev. Naomi King received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and has served most recently the River of Grass UU Congregation in Florida. She was an intern minister at Horizon UU Church in Texas and has been active in the movement for sustainable agriculture on a global basis with Project Harvest Hope. She was a communion service preacher for the UUCF at General Assembly in 2006.
Rev. Thom Belote is minister of Shawnee Mission UU Church in Overland Park, Kansas and is editor of the new book "The Growing Church: Keys to Congregational Vitality. In his seven years at his church it has grown by 50 percent. He has served on the Executive Committee of the UU Ministers Association as well as an internship at Horizon UU Church in Texas, and student ministries in Needham and Boston, MA. He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard.
Rev. Lillie Mae Henley is minister of Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., an historic Universalist Christian church called the Universalist National Cathedral when it was built. She received her Masters of Divinity from Meadville Lombard and was minister of Westside UU Church in Fort Worth and served as interim in three other UU congregations. She has served on the Board of the UUCF and was the Revival communion preacher in 2009.
Rev. Dennis Hamilton is minister of the host church Horizon in Carrolton, Texas. He is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry and was Horizon's first minister as part of the UUA extension ministry program. He has been a leader in the Southwest UU Conference and UU Musicians Network serving on the task force that developed the new hymnal supplement Singing The Journey.
Rev. Ron Robinson has been Executive Director of the UUCF since 2003 and is a missional church planter in the northside of Tulsa, OK with A Third Place Community, and serves as Director of Ministerial Formation and part time faculty at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa where he received his Masters of Divinity. He has been a hospice chaplain, student minister in Bartlesville, OK, intern minister at All Souls Church in Tulsa, and started the UU Congregation of Tahlequah, OK.
Worship team leader for Revival is the Rev. Tony Lorenzen of Pathways UU Church in Southlake, TX, who is a member of the UUCF Board of Directors and was an intern minister at First Parish in Weston, He received his Masters of Divinity from Harvard and also served with the First Parish Church in Billerica, MA.
Worship Leaders will include:
Opening Worship with multi church choir and presented by ministers from the Dallas Fort Worth area
Taize Worship with the Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, program minister of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City who has also served as the District Growth minister of the Southwestern Conference and at James Reeb UU Church, a new congregation start in Madison, WI. She has been president of the national Interweave organization. She was the prayer and healing service preacher at Revival 2009 and presented the Sunset Talks at the 2009 Southwest UU Summer Institute.
Communion and Baptism worship will be led by the Rev. Thomas D. Wintle who is senior minister at First Parish Church in Weston, MA. He previously served with the First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster, MA, and as Executive Director of the UUCF. For thirty years he has been editor of the UU Christian Journal. He received his Doctorate from Chicago Theological Seminary affiliated with the University of Chicago.
Prayer and Healing Service will be led by the Rev. David Owen O'Quill founding pastor of Micah's Porch Community Church in Chicago. He is a graduate of Meadville Lombard and has served at the UU Church in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Daily Office morning and evening prayer will be led by the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Spencer, who has served UU churches in Danbury, CT and Weston, MA, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. She holds a law degree from Boston University and theological degrees from Harvard and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.
Small Group Leader again this year will be the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger of the Greater Unitarian Universalist church in New Orleans, who has previously served churches in New Jersey and Tennessee and New Zealand and is a past president of the UUCF and preacher at Revivals in the past. She received her theological degree from Loyola Institute of Ministry.
please pass this on to your church and your district or cluster email lists, to your social network sites, to your newsletter editor, to colleagues, friends, family in your area both UU and others. You don't have to be Christian to come and be welcomed, or to be Unitarian Universalist to come and be welcomed. We don't think Jesus would have it any other way.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
A View of Us From Outside, With Pics
Here is a blog that gives a good peek into the community center part of our being, the missional in the missional church so to speak; I will have to see about doing something similar to record our worships either in the center or out and about in the community to give then a well rounded glimpse into our current incarnation anyway.
http://uuminister.blogspot.com/2010/08/miracle-among-ruins.html
While you are visiting Lizard Eater check out her various posts about missional church classes in seminary, church planting, etc.
http://uuminister.blogspot.com/2010/08/miracle-among-ruins.html
While you are visiting Lizard Eater check out her various posts about missional church classes in seminary, church planting, etc.
Saturday, August 07, 2010
To See, To Share, To Serve
Here is this week's reflection on this week's lectionary selection of scripture. See http://www.textweek.com/ for more on the lectionary. Glad that the UUCF was a part of the creation of the lectionary; also see http://www.commontexts.org/. It will be posted up this week at http://www.uuchristian.org/ in the Virtual Monastery section where people visit to engage their spiritual journey, deepen their path, regardless of where they are coming from theologically. We think Jesus would have it no other way.
By Rev. Ron Robinson
During the Pentecost and Ordinary Time Season for the week of Aug. 8
Seeing, Sharing, Serving: The Way of the Jesus Community
Scripture For The Week: Read through slowly, each sentence at a time, and read backwards taking the last sentence first and reading it and then the next to the last and reading it; all so that you can trick your mind into paying attention to each part of it and not skipping and passing over what we think we know, so that we can encounter it freshly, so that some words will jump out to us as they would have those who heard them in the oral tradition in the time and way of Jesus.
Luke 12:32-48
32“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 35“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. 39“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
41Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?” 42And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will put in charge of his slaves, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? 43Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. 44Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. 45But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and if he begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, 46the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and put him with the unfaithful. 47That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. 48But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
Reflection on Scripture:
What treasures lay hidden in this text. One of the reasons I love being a Christian is having a particular path to go deep into (where the deeper you go, of course, the closer you draw toward the hub of the Spirit toward which the other paths are going deep along their spokes) and in our scriptures there are openings galore where you can live and seek and find sustaining meaning. These words from Luke's gospel are one of those portals. Ready made for meditating and focusing on one sentence or one word and letting it lead us into where we need to act, letting it guide our prayers this week.
Do not be afraid. This is not said unless there is a reason to be afraid. Before you can not be afraid, you need to face what you are afraid of. Just as Jesus asks Peter later if he loves him, if he loves him, if he loves him, calling him to go deeper and deeper and not skim the surface of his replies, so we are called as disciples of hope to pause and ponder and ask ourselves, what do we fear, what do we fear, what do we fear, until we know it enough to walk with it and see our fears for what they are, not the sum of us. The sum of us that has been given to us, and yet our fears keep us from seeing it, sharing it, serving it, is the kingdom of God.
What is the kingdom? The opposite of Caeser's kingdom, the opposite of that which our culture, our families, our own tapes inside our head, say that it is, that we don't have enough to share and to serve to help others have more. Sell your possessions. Give alms. Get rid of what possesses you. Relocate from the kingdom of appearances, achievements, affluence to the kingdom of the heart where the treasure of everlasting abundant life is found. What do we fear that keeps us striving for the kingdom that builds us up instead of building up others? What keeps us from turning our worlds, our communities, upside down and inside out so that the master is serving the slave, and in doing so erasing the identities and roles that the kingdom of Caeser puts on them?
Opportunities for getting outside of ourselves and our safe spaces, of facing our fears and letting love emerge, are all around us if we have the eyes to see and can help others to see them. They will most likely happen when and where we least expect it, but we have to be open for that to happen, relocating our attention spans and gazes and value systems and in many cases physically going to be with others that are different from us. This is a hallmark of the missional church movement, to see the church realized in others and not in our own sense of self identity, and it is a way of love for all our relationships. Over and over again in the scriptures Jesus points out that it is the way, the narrow way, we meet the presence of God.
Many of us have been given much in terms of physical safety, financial safety, emotional safety; much is required of us now to see this, to share this safety, and to serve others in the spirit of the kingdom that breaks down the haves and the have nots. In the community where I live it is the one with the lowest life expectancy in the Tulsa, OK area, fourteen years lower than those in the zipcode just six miles south of us on the same street. My community has the highest health care needs, but we have the least resources for health located where we are. Because our residents are the sickest their costs are the highest; because our residents are the poorest there is not the pool of the insured to help offset the costs; just this summer almost all of the clinics for all that were located in our wider community have been closed because of funding cutbacks. The only clinic remaining open is the one in our community center created by our church, our small group of UU Christians and others who join with us,and our hours have been cutback and we have been placed on a year's notice if funding doesn't turn around. But at this very time and because of this situation, as terrible as it is, we have found strength in collaboration and in dreaming of new ways to become a healthier community, one that does not rely solely on the kindnesses of strangers and faraway funders (even as we need and want them), but ways that will draw us closer together, turning us into healers of sorts in our own neighborhoods, redefining "clinic" away from its default mode as an institution that attracts the sick to it, and into an incarnational movement of people trained to help one another.
In order to begin to make this happen, one of the first steps we have learned is that with all we have, or with as little as we have, we may never feel we have enough on just our own, and that void always before us is that we are in need of relationships with others, especially those different from us. Living in this deeper sense of shared abundance is what keeps it growing and spreading and what allows healing and imagination and creativity and that which Jesus called "God's kingdom" (and in our situation in my local area we might call "God's Clinic" 'to emerge). Follow along with our story at www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com and www.turleyok.blogspot.com.
The opposite of poverty, as it is said, is not wealth but community. And being in a community of those freely following Jesus is a key way to prepare ourselves for seeing those moments and people and places, especially in the Ordinary, where God is, calling us to share and serve, and in doing so to see more.
Prayer: O God of love so everlasting that allows us to fear and to move through it, help us to open our eyes and to see what we have been given, help us to see what we have not seen, even of You, even of ourselves, as well as of those around us. Move us to share and to receive the sharings of others as a way to create relationships that will sustain us when all our personal possessions, of mind body and spirit, become insignificant in the light of the Eternal. In these days when we still feel the power of the Pentecost story of great abundance and diversity wellling up into our story, in these days known as Ordinary Time when we prepare our souls in routine regular tasks and disciplines so that we can know how extraordinary your gifts to us are, come knocking on door, knocking on our door, knocking on our door, and even when we don't recognize you at first, and even when in our fears we do recognize you and will have none of you, sometimes for all good reasons, Dear Lord, don't turn away from us, but keep knocking, until we say so be it, it is so, Amen.
By Rev. Ron Robinson
During the Pentecost and Ordinary Time Season for the week of Aug. 8
Seeing, Sharing, Serving: The Way of the Jesus Community
Scripture For The Week: Read through slowly, each sentence at a time, and read backwards taking the last sentence first and reading it and then the next to the last and reading it; all so that you can trick your mind into paying attention to each part of it and not skipping and passing over what we think we know, so that we can encounter it freshly, so that some words will jump out to us as they would have those who heard them in the oral tradition in the time and way of Jesus.
Luke 12:32-48
32“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 35“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. 39“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
41Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?” 42And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will put in charge of his slaves, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? 43Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. 44Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. 45But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and if he begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, 46the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and put him with the unfaithful. 47That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. 48But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
Reflection on Scripture:
What treasures lay hidden in this text. One of the reasons I love being a Christian is having a particular path to go deep into (where the deeper you go, of course, the closer you draw toward the hub of the Spirit toward which the other paths are going deep along their spokes) and in our scriptures there are openings galore where you can live and seek and find sustaining meaning. These words from Luke's gospel are one of those portals. Ready made for meditating and focusing on one sentence or one word and letting it lead us into where we need to act, letting it guide our prayers this week.
Do not be afraid. This is not said unless there is a reason to be afraid. Before you can not be afraid, you need to face what you are afraid of. Just as Jesus asks Peter later if he loves him, if he loves him, if he loves him, calling him to go deeper and deeper and not skim the surface of his replies, so we are called as disciples of hope to pause and ponder and ask ourselves, what do we fear, what do we fear, what do we fear, until we know it enough to walk with it and see our fears for what they are, not the sum of us. The sum of us that has been given to us, and yet our fears keep us from seeing it, sharing it, serving it, is the kingdom of God.
What is the kingdom? The opposite of Caeser's kingdom, the opposite of that which our culture, our families, our own tapes inside our head, say that it is, that we don't have enough to share and to serve to help others have more. Sell your possessions. Give alms. Get rid of what possesses you. Relocate from the kingdom of appearances, achievements, affluence to the kingdom of the heart where the treasure of everlasting abundant life is found. What do we fear that keeps us striving for the kingdom that builds us up instead of building up others? What keeps us from turning our worlds, our communities, upside down and inside out so that the master is serving the slave, and in doing so erasing the identities and roles that the kingdom of Caeser puts on them?
Opportunities for getting outside of ourselves and our safe spaces, of facing our fears and letting love emerge, are all around us if we have the eyes to see and can help others to see them. They will most likely happen when and where we least expect it, but we have to be open for that to happen, relocating our attention spans and gazes and value systems and in many cases physically going to be with others that are different from us. This is a hallmark of the missional church movement, to see the church realized in others and not in our own sense of self identity, and it is a way of love for all our relationships. Over and over again in the scriptures Jesus points out that it is the way, the narrow way, we meet the presence of God.
Many of us have been given much in terms of physical safety, financial safety, emotional safety; much is required of us now to see this, to share this safety, and to serve others in the spirit of the kingdom that breaks down the haves and the have nots. In the community where I live it is the one with the lowest life expectancy in the Tulsa, OK area, fourteen years lower than those in the zipcode just six miles south of us on the same street. My community has the highest health care needs, but we have the least resources for health located where we are. Because our residents are the sickest their costs are the highest; because our residents are the poorest there is not the pool of the insured to help offset the costs; just this summer almost all of the clinics for all that were located in our wider community have been closed because of funding cutbacks. The only clinic remaining open is the one in our community center created by our church, our small group of UU Christians and others who join with us,and our hours have been cutback and we have been placed on a year's notice if funding doesn't turn around. But at this very time and because of this situation, as terrible as it is, we have found strength in collaboration and in dreaming of new ways to become a healthier community, one that does not rely solely on the kindnesses of strangers and faraway funders (even as we need and want them), but ways that will draw us closer together, turning us into healers of sorts in our own neighborhoods, redefining "clinic" away from its default mode as an institution that attracts the sick to it, and into an incarnational movement of people trained to help one another.
In order to begin to make this happen, one of the first steps we have learned is that with all we have, or with as little as we have, we may never feel we have enough on just our own, and that void always before us is that we are in need of relationships with others, especially those different from us. Living in this deeper sense of shared abundance is what keeps it growing and spreading and what allows healing and imagination and creativity and that which Jesus called "God's kingdom" (and in our situation in my local area we might call "God's Clinic" 'to emerge). Follow along with our story at www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com and www.turleyok.blogspot.com.
The opposite of poverty, as it is said, is not wealth but community. And being in a community of those freely following Jesus is a key way to prepare ourselves for seeing those moments and people and places, especially in the Ordinary, where God is, calling us to share and serve, and in doing so to see more.
Prayer: O God of love so everlasting that allows us to fear and to move through it, help us to open our eyes and to see what we have been given, help us to see what we have not seen, even of You, even of ourselves, as well as of those around us. Move us to share and to receive the sharings of others as a way to create relationships that will sustain us when all our personal possessions, of mind body and spirit, become insignificant in the light of the Eternal. In these days when we still feel the power of the Pentecost story of great abundance and diversity wellling up into our story, in these days known as Ordinary Time when we prepare our souls in routine regular tasks and disciplines so that we can know how extraordinary your gifts to us are, come knocking on door, knocking on our door, knocking on our door, and even when we don't recognize you at first, and even when in our fears we do recognize you and will have none of you, sometimes for all good reasons, Dear Lord, don't turn away from us, but keep knocking, until we say so be it, it is so, Amen.
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