To www.churchconsultations.com/fileadmin/community/PowerPoint/denominational1.ppt
Your one stop comprehensive church and denominational growth and planting findings and ideas on what works and what doesn't and what is required to grow and what will hold it back, etc.
A not too dated (2007 I think) comprehensive and excellent powerpoint by Bill Easum, one of the top church consultants with experience in this area, on the whys and hows of denominational and church growth and church planting. This has got it all especially for people interested in growing something vaguely familiar anyway to the image of church most people have from the past, but there is a lot of missional growth embedded in these findings too.
We need to be planting one percent of our total number of congregations each year to survive. What is that? 10? Plus they shouldn't be planted as "churches" but as church planting churches.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Saturday, May 08, 2010
The News From Turley Area: Summer of Community Health
A Third Place Community Center, 6514 N. Peoria Ave., where small acts of justice done with great love change the world. It has been a wonderful three years of growing in mission here. We had our Grand Opening in June 2007.
Just letting the news speak for itself this time about events ongoing here in the northern-edge community of Tulsa. It is pretty amazing stuff but only if you participate if you live close by in the greater Tulsa area, and if you live further way you can participate by helping spread our story in all the ways you have because you never know when it will reach that one or two people who will be so inspired by what's going on here, and how it is going on, that they will inspire us back their generosity, their ideas, their connections.
We just finished last rainy weekend the Beautify Turley Day, and were surprisingly and wonderfully joined at the last minute by a church youth group from Kansas which helped clean up our streets (thanks Vanessa and the Center for Racial Justice for their recommendation), and the renewed Welcome Sign is looking beautiful and still being finished; the music was great at the community center, and the schools gardens are growing too. We helped Cherokee School with a partner in education lunch Friday and made more good plans and connections there. Then did the same with From Turley to TU community coalitions networking at State Rep. Seneca Scott's monthly meeting--lots of people doing great things and lots of ideas for working together.
It launched us into a coming Summer of Transforming Love.
We have brought the Bookmobile back this summer to Turley, to A Third Place Center, so exciting. First day will be Friday June 4. Spread the word and let's swamp them with a welcome and customers.
We will have a Community Health Initiative working with OU social work students, and also another project working with OU pre med and medical students coming to Turley. See below.
We will have our Fourth Annual Turley and Area Festival Celebration Juneteenth Event, June 18-19
We will feed all the children in our area a free lunch everyday at Cherokee School from June 7 to August 6 so even though they aren't in school where they are primarily fed they will continue to have at least one good meal a day, and we will have activities for them too.
Coming up right away to support all the above:
Sunday, May 9, 10 am missional Mothers Day
Tuesday, May 11, 11 am north tulsa community coalitions networking at Job Corps; then come to 6:30 pm at the center every second Tuesday Let Turley Bloom ecological documentary; this day it is critically acclaimed "Manufactured Landscapes" and sustainability conversation and community gardening planning.
Wednesday, May 12, 5:30 pm unveiling the final design from OU Tulsa Graduate Design Studio for our project to transform a city block of abandoned homes into the Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park project at 60th and N. Johnstown. We have a closing date on purchase coming up and still need some 100 people to give an average $100 to help us begin the project. Go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and donate online, and pass it on. It only happens with your help. Donate more if you can, less if you need to, and spread the word to others. See the full vision on the website.
Friday, May 21, 2:30 pm Turley Leadership Council networking at the Center
June 4-5, June 18-19 and July 2-3, Community Health Initiative with OU Graduate Social Work students and A Third Place. Two neighborhoods and others will be closely surveyed to build an understanding of the community health problems in our area, information that will help us, we hope, get grants to help alleviate the issues.
Fridays July 9 and 16 Community Health Project with OU premed and medical students in our area.
And ongoing worship Sunday mornings, community and guerilla gardening and the "usual subversive activities" during the week. Or just come hang out. And working working working on the Big Vision news hope to unveil soon too about creating safe and sustainable spaces, outdoors and indoors, from one end of our area to the other.
It sounds like a lot going on, and compared to the years right before we began to incarnate Jesus and Freedom into our community, there has been a real emergence of "good things happening", but we always, always have room for your passion, your project, your connections, your dreams. Help us grow your soul, the soul of our community, and in the process the soul of God which keeps on giving.
www.turleyok.blogspot.com www.uuchristian.org www.facebook.com/revronrobinson
Just letting the news speak for itself this time about events ongoing here in the northern-edge community of Tulsa. It is pretty amazing stuff but only if you participate if you live close by in the greater Tulsa area, and if you live further way you can participate by helping spread our story in all the ways you have because you never know when it will reach that one or two people who will be so inspired by what's going on here, and how it is going on, that they will inspire us back their generosity, their ideas, their connections.
We just finished last rainy weekend the Beautify Turley Day, and were surprisingly and wonderfully joined at the last minute by a church youth group from Kansas which helped clean up our streets (thanks Vanessa and the Center for Racial Justice for their recommendation), and the renewed Welcome Sign is looking beautiful and still being finished; the music was great at the community center, and the schools gardens are growing too. We helped Cherokee School with a partner in education lunch Friday and made more good plans and connections there. Then did the same with From Turley to TU community coalitions networking at State Rep. Seneca Scott's monthly meeting--lots of people doing great things and lots of ideas for working together.
It launched us into a coming Summer of Transforming Love.
We have brought the Bookmobile back this summer to Turley, to A Third Place Center, so exciting. First day will be Friday June 4. Spread the word and let's swamp them with a welcome and customers.
We will have a Community Health Initiative working with OU social work students, and also another project working with OU pre med and medical students coming to Turley. See below.
We will have our Fourth Annual Turley and Area Festival Celebration Juneteenth Event, June 18-19
We will feed all the children in our area a free lunch everyday at Cherokee School from June 7 to August 6 so even though they aren't in school where they are primarily fed they will continue to have at least one good meal a day, and we will have activities for them too.
Coming up right away to support all the above:
Sunday, May 9, 10 am missional Mothers Day
Tuesday, May 11, 11 am north tulsa community coalitions networking at Job Corps; then come to 6:30 pm at the center every second Tuesday Let Turley Bloom ecological documentary; this day it is critically acclaimed "Manufactured Landscapes" and sustainability conversation and community gardening planning.
Wednesday, May 12, 5:30 pm unveiling the final design from OU Tulsa Graduate Design Studio for our project to transform a city block of abandoned homes into the Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park project at 60th and N. Johnstown. We have a closing date on purchase coming up and still need some 100 people to give an average $100 to help us begin the project. Go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and donate online, and pass it on. It only happens with your help. Donate more if you can, less if you need to, and spread the word to others. See the full vision on the website.
Friday, May 21, 2:30 pm Turley Leadership Council networking at the Center
June 4-5, June 18-19 and July 2-3, Community Health Initiative with OU Graduate Social Work students and A Third Place. Two neighborhoods and others will be closely surveyed to build an understanding of the community health problems in our area, information that will help us, we hope, get grants to help alleviate the issues.
Fridays July 9 and 16 Community Health Project with OU premed and medical students in our area.
And ongoing worship Sunday mornings, community and guerilla gardening and the "usual subversive activities" during the week. Or just come hang out. And working working working on the Big Vision news hope to unveil soon too about creating safe and sustainable spaces, outdoors and indoors, from one end of our area to the other.
It sounds like a lot going on, and compared to the years right before we began to incarnate Jesus and Freedom into our community, there has been a real emergence of "good things happening", but we always, always have room for your passion, your project, your connections, your dreams. Help us grow your soul, the soul of our community, and in the process the soul of God which keeps on giving.
www.turleyok.blogspot.com www.uuchristian.org www.facebook.com/revronrobinson
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Images of God and Church: Mission and Worship: And Us
This past Sunday we began our worship by all sharing one to three words that described our manifestation of the church here. Here they are:
thankful...hope...community...authentic...inclusive...socialized...friendship...peace...fellowship...
informal...caring...justice-oriented...flexible...party...comfortable...open-minded...
loving...public...home-coming...inside out, upside down...
welcoming...family...fun...free...forgiving...worshipful...nexus...connecting...saying please/permission-giving...interactive...experiential...images...attentiveness....
original...destiny/purposeful...non-competitive...personal growth...respectful of persons...chaotic.
And we put a big X to stand for all those that we knew would come to mind, and perhaps be more fitting even, than the ones we came up with immediately in a few minutes.
Then I said that a church should be an image of God. Basic Intro to Theology: What you imagine God will affect how you imagine the cosmos/universe/nature which affects how you imagine human nature which affects how you imagine evil/sin which affects how you imagine salvation/christology/ which affects how you imagine the church as a people growing out of the Christ or Saving Event...which finally affects your vision of the Blessed Community in the Fullness of Time-ish.
So, given these were how we imagined and experienced church...what does that say about our image and experience of God? If we are fulfilled by church then maybe that will help us re-experience God in a deeper more satisfying and sustaining way as we see and feel around us God embodied. If we are not experiencing the church as life-affirming, then maybe we, individually and as church communities, should undertake the theological work together of considering our image of God and the resulting other theological touchstones mentioned in the paragraph above, and see where the image of God is getting block and changed on its way to being realized as the church.
It challenges our default mode or old tapes running in our minds of God. For those words we chose to describe us as the church are active, communal, emotional, etc. not exactly in synch with the God of the Unmoved Mover, or Omnipotent and Omniscience and Perfect in a classic sense, more grassroots and relational than Top-Down. So it allowed us to talk about different ways to imagine and be moved by God, and to understand how we are all in some ways atheists to one another, so therefore those who identify as atheists and agnostics are also welcome within us too (then we all joined and said The Lord's Prayer, and there's a parable of the congregational free church in that) and we discussed our grounding in covenant and freedom and growth and openness, and yet how all of our words that ground us and give us meaning can also be taken to an extreme and begin to work against our very intentions.
A missional church is sent to live its existence outside itself, and through that process, and due to it, to find itself most deeply; likewise it embodies a missional God. A missional God is one whose Spirit will not stay contained within itself but lives outside its own existence, thus always creating, and through all the loving and freedom and suffering and redemption that happens as a part of that "God living beyond God's self" God also takes back into God's very being all that there is, now and forever, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant or no matter how "un-Godly" it may seem to us.
So when we worship we freely use the words that have been touchstones of the church universal and of our tradition, and those words theological have a purpose in themselves too for how they create a counter culture of words of value that go against the grain of the words that the entertainment marketplace empire seeks to impose on us, and we grow into those words deeper and deeper and richer and richer the longer and more intimately and more liberally we become with them.
Then, since it continues to be Eastertide, we watched a wonderful DVD about progressive Christian understandings and ways to interpret the stories of resurrection, and how to practice resurrection in our lives, and that it is okay to have a wide range of current understandings about Jesus and Resurrection, and acknowledging that we do have such a range, and that making room for others means we make room for our own change and growth.
In that way, even what we do when we celebrate communion in worship on Sunday mornings, is all a part of living beyond ourselves, missionally, and not something separate from what we primarily do as church the rest of the hours of the week.
thankful...hope...community...authentic...inclusive...socialized...friendship...peace...fellowship...
informal...caring...justice-oriented...flexible...party...comfortable...open-minded...
loving...public...home-coming...inside out, upside down...
welcoming...family...fun...free...forgiving...worshipful...nexus...connecting...saying please/permission-giving...interactive...experiential...images...attentiveness....
original...destiny/purposeful...non-competitive...personal growth...respectful of persons...chaotic.
And we put a big X to stand for all those that we knew would come to mind, and perhaps be more fitting even, than the ones we came up with immediately in a few minutes.
Then I said that a church should be an image of God. Basic Intro to Theology: What you imagine God will affect how you imagine the cosmos/universe/nature which affects how you imagine human nature which affects how you imagine evil/sin which affects how you imagine salvation/christology/ which affects how you imagine the church as a people growing out of the Christ or Saving Event...which finally affects your vision of the Blessed Community in the Fullness of Time-ish.
So, given these were how we imagined and experienced church...what does that say about our image and experience of God? If we are fulfilled by church then maybe that will help us re-experience God in a deeper more satisfying and sustaining way as we see and feel around us God embodied. If we are not experiencing the church as life-affirming, then maybe we, individually and as church communities, should undertake the theological work together of considering our image of God and the resulting other theological touchstones mentioned in the paragraph above, and see where the image of God is getting block and changed on its way to being realized as the church.
It challenges our default mode or old tapes running in our minds of God. For those words we chose to describe us as the church are active, communal, emotional, etc. not exactly in synch with the God of the Unmoved Mover, or Omnipotent and Omniscience and Perfect in a classic sense, more grassroots and relational than Top-Down. So it allowed us to talk about different ways to imagine and be moved by God, and to understand how we are all in some ways atheists to one another, so therefore those who identify as atheists and agnostics are also welcome within us too (then we all joined and said The Lord's Prayer, and there's a parable of the congregational free church in that) and we discussed our grounding in covenant and freedom and growth and openness, and yet how all of our words that ground us and give us meaning can also be taken to an extreme and begin to work against our very intentions.
A missional church is sent to live its existence outside itself, and through that process, and due to it, to find itself most deeply; likewise it embodies a missional God. A missional God is one whose Spirit will not stay contained within itself but lives outside its own existence, thus always creating, and through all the loving and freedom and suffering and redemption that happens as a part of that "God living beyond God's self" God also takes back into God's very being all that there is, now and forever, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant or no matter how "un-Godly" it may seem to us.
So when we worship we freely use the words that have been touchstones of the church universal and of our tradition, and those words theological have a purpose in themselves too for how they create a counter culture of words of value that go against the grain of the words that the entertainment marketplace empire seeks to impose on us, and we grow into those words deeper and deeper and richer and richer the longer and more intimately and more liberally we become with them.
Then, since it continues to be Eastertide, we watched a wonderful DVD about progressive Christian understandings and ways to interpret the stories of resurrection, and how to practice resurrection in our lives, and that it is okay to have a wide range of current understandings about Jesus and Resurrection, and acknowledging that we do have such a range, and that making room for others means we make room for our own change and growth.
In that way, even what we do when we celebrate communion in worship on Sunday mornings, is all a part of living beyond ourselves, missionally, and not something separate from what we primarily do as church the rest of the hours of the week.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Christian Activists, Conservative Evangelicals, Others, On Immigration Reform
I love being both progressive, i.e. liberal/liberationist, and missional...obviously don't like crowds even though I am an extrovert :), and one of the things I like most is my dialogue with conservative missional brothers and sisters in Christ, especially when we begin to converge to make things happen "in the kin-dom" such as on immigration reform. We here are members of the Christian Community Development Association, www.ccda.org, which has many much more conservative theological partners. Recent actions in Arizona have helped move people from many perspectives into prayer and action on these issues. Below is some dialogue about that. I wasn't able to make the phone conference this time, but wanted to share some of the correspondence about it. Especially if you are progressive and think that you are alone in your faithful response. Note some of these partners coming together via the CCDA.
Here is some of the correspondence:
Dave Clark
CCDA
Chief of Staff
Dear Friends,
I was just in Phoenix, AZ the last two days to support our CCDA ministries working with many immigrant families, and to urge Arizona Governor Brewer to veto a proposed bill that you have most likely heard about on the news, a bill that would give the local police a mandate to round up and deport undocumented residents in their state. One of the most negative aspects of this proposed legislation is the racial profiling that would occur for Latino looking individuals, regardless of their legal status.
At the state capital on Tuesday, many Christians and immigration advocates gathered to protest and to pray that this bill NOT be signed into law, and that a more humane approach of dealing with our current broken immigration system would be pursued--through the passing of comprehensive immigration reform by our federal government.
The leadership of CCDA has made an intentional decision to help our members become more informed and educated regarding what a Biblical and humane immigration policy would look like in our nation, and so I am inviting all of our CCDA family to participate in a conference call with a group of Christian leaders from around the nation, some clergy, and some business leaders who will share their perspectives regarding the need for immigration reform and what we as Christians can do to help bring about this reform.
I will be one of the speakers on this call. I encourage you to rally your constituencies to join the call as well.
With much love and admiration for all you do for the Kingdom,
Noel Castellanos
CEO, CCDA
Evangelical, Business and other Conservative Leaders to Give Update on Divisive Arizona Immigration Law
and Discuss Need for Congress and the President to Act NOW on Comprehensive Immigration Reform
You are invited on Thursday, April 29th at 2:00 PM EDT, to participate in the second strategy call with hundreds of Conservative grassroots advocates from around the country to hear from key business and Evangelical leaders on updates regarding Arizona’s divisive immigration law and plans to push for immigration reform this year. The call will be open to all denominations, businesspeople, political figures and press.
From various major cities, including Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Phoenix, Miami, New York and Washington DC, Conservative leaders will pray for a solution to the moral, economic and political crisis that our broken immigration system is causing for millions of families, especially in Arizona, and share strategies for breaking the stalemate in Congress to move immigration reform this year. As tens of thousands of activists prepare to march for immigration reform on May 1, we will share details for a national gathering being organized in Washington DC and discuss work that conservatives can engage in to increase pressure on the President and key Republicans in the Senate to move on immigration reform now.
WHO: Jeff Moseley, President, Houston Partnership, Houston, TX
Carlos Gutierrez, Former Secretary of Commerce Under President George W. Bush, Washington, DC
Rev. Eve Nuñez, Founder and President, Arizona Latino Commission, Phoenix, AZ
Alfonso Aguilar, Former Head of The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, appointed by president George W. Bush and Senior Fellow, Latino Project for Conservative Principles, Washington DC
Samuel Rodriguez, President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Sacramento, CA
Noel Castellanos, CEO, Christian Community Development Association, Chicago, Ill
Jim Tolle, Senior Pastor, The Church on the Way, Los Angeles, CA
Here is some of the correspondence:
Dave Clark
CCDA
Chief of Staff
Dear Friends,
I was just in Phoenix, AZ the last two days to support our CCDA ministries working with many immigrant families, and to urge Arizona Governor Brewer to veto a proposed bill that you have most likely heard about on the news, a bill that would give the local police a mandate to round up and deport undocumented residents in their state. One of the most negative aspects of this proposed legislation is the racial profiling that would occur for Latino looking individuals, regardless of their legal status.
At the state capital on Tuesday, many Christians and immigration advocates gathered to protest and to pray that this bill NOT be signed into law, and that a more humane approach of dealing with our current broken immigration system would be pursued--through the passing of comprehensive immigration reform by our federal government.
The leadership of CCDA has made an intentional decision to help our members become more informed and educated regarding what a Biblical and humane immigration policy would look like in our nation, and so I am inviting all of our CCDA family to participate in a conference call with a group of Christian leaders from around the nation, some clergy, and some business leaders who will share their perspectives regarding the need for immigration reform and what we as Christians can do to help bring about this reform.
I will be one of the speakers on this call. I encourage you to rally your constituencies to join the call as well.
With much love and admiration for all you do for the Kingdom,
Noel Castellanos
CEO, CCDA
Evangelical, Business and other Conservative Leaders to Give Update on Divisive Arizona Immigration Law
and Discuss Need for Congress and the President to Act NOW on Comprehensive Immigration Reform
You are invited on Thursday, April 29th at 2:00 PM EDT, to participate in the second strategy call with hundreds of Conservative grassroots advocates from around the country to hear from key business and Evangelical leaders on updates regarding Arizona’s divisive immigration law and plans to push for immigration reform this year. The call will be open to all denominations, businesspeople, political figures and press.
From various major cities, including Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Phoenix, Miami, New York and Washington DC, Conservative leaders will pray for a solution to the moral, economic and political crisis that our broken immigration system is causing for millions of families, especially in Arizona, and share strategies for breaking the stalemate in Congress to move immigration reform this year. As tens of thousands of activists prepare to march for immigration reform on May 1, we will share details for a national gathering being organized in Washington DC and discuss work that conservatives can engage in to increase pressure on the President and key Republicans in the Senate to move on immigration reform now.
WHO: Jeff Moseley, President, Houston Partnership, Houston, TX
Carlos Gutierrez, Former Secretary of Commerce Under President George W. Bush, Washington, DC
Rev. Eve Nuñez, Founder and President, Arizona Latino Commission, Phoenix, AZ
Alfonso Aguilar, Former Head of The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, appointed by president George W. Bush and Senior Fellow, Latino Project for Conservative Principles, Washington DC
Samuel Rodriguez, President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Sacramento, CA
Noel Castellanos, CEO, Christian Community Development Association, Chicago, Ill
Jim Tolle, Senior Pastor, The Church on the Way, Los Angeles, CA
The Crumbs Under The Welcome Table Church
First, let me say it's been a wonderful and full to overflowing Eastertide here in our church. We have finished our free community academy and have projects underway in nine areas growing out of the grassroots organizing with OU Graduate social work students and our residents, our own strategic planning, have watched and discussed the movies The Blind Side and Man on a Wire and linked them to our missional community here. And we have continued with our efforts at The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park and more adding new partners every week and conducting more folks around our area and connecting them with our projects, amazing them that so much is being done by so few all volunteers. .
We also had a good sermon written in part about us that inspires me even more. You can see it at www.revthom.blogspot.com under "The Abandoned Places of Empire" and to keep up with some of what is going on, and why, continue to go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.
Tomorrow we will be practicing resurrection by putting in a new welcome to turley sign and beautifying it, and working more at Cherokee School and maybe Greeley school gardens we have started, and cleaning up the trash dumped on our streets, and having a giveaway day for books and clothes and more at the center and have a free meal and a free performance of country music by Johnny and the Oklahomans.
Sunday we will have communion, pray the lords prayer as every week, talk about the resurrection and talk about God and Belief and God without Belief et al and why atheists are welcome here at our missional community without their having to feel constantly beseiged to change their minds, and we will see some powerful witnesses about resurrection from the progressive Christian www.livingthequestions.com DVD, and if weather permits we might do some of it up at the hilltop site where we are trying to raise funds for The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park amid the ruins. Come and join us either at the Center 6514 N. Peoria or at the hilltop at 60th and N. Johnstown at 10 am or when you can make it, and stay for our common meal together. Sundays here, as you will read below, are always full of surprises, and as my colleague and friend and mentor Carl Scovel has written, surprise is God's other name, truly, truly.
The title of this homily doesn't refer, necessarily, to the informal and homey way we do communion every Sunday morning, though we often comment how the mess we make of the bread of life everlasting is like how the body of Christ is not neat and orderly, well prepared and sanitarily presented and easy and conveniently consumed, but instead comes to us in fragments, crumbles, and gets all over us even when we try to keep it together.
The title of this homily refers to how the welcome table that is our lives, and our churches and associations, is a place for mutual transformation and conversion, one crumb at a time. The story behind the title is the story of Jesus' encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, from Mark 7. And it is our story, my story, in our missional community of faith here. It is not easy; mistakes happen; I slip back into default mode of scarcity too, and am comforted by this gospel story that it happens to Jesus too. More on that story and then about what happened last Sunday, a little story, that moves me still.
Jesus heads outside his perceived comfort zone, off toward Tyre in an area where the dominant culture is not Jewish but Gentile. He tries to hide, take a break for awhile, find his comfort zone, inside a house so no one would know he was there, but a woman alone, a mother, goes inside to confront him and plead for Jesus to heal her daughter.And Jesus dismissively says no, that the bread of his healing, that God, is only for those of his kind. Instead of letting that stand though, she, who risked much by going to him, risking rejection and shame, but driven by love and justice, says back to Jesus, as if quoting Jesus himself, holding up a mirror for him to see his self, says but even the dogs get the crumbs off the masters table. Even a little bread, even the crumbs, even those unintentionally given or found in surprising and shameful places and people, that will have healing too. And Jesus is caught up, converted, changed, and the woman's daughter is healed, and so too is Jesus.
Last Sunday, I am at the Center scurrying around trying to set up worship space, make copies, get things ready because I want our communion service to be one where the presence of God is experienced in our sharing of our lives, lighting candles, prayers, communion homily about Peter and Tabitha, spirited singing and then our watching the documentary and discussion about how we were a Church on the Wire, creating risky beauty acts in dangerous ways and places in secular society. I am in my zone or trying to get in my zone for worship, and then a woman with a daughter in need of healing slips into the house where I have other plans, am thinking about myself.
But this time the syrophoenician woman is instead an 11 year old boy who often comes to our center to be on the computers during the week and especially on Sunday, sometimes he comes in and out of worship with us, sometimes stays nearby on the computers, sometimes it gets a little distracting especially when it draws the other children away from our circle of worship. And this time, this Sunday, I really wanted worship to be that moving kind of experience. And so scurrying around I find him and tell him that today the community center will be closed and he can stay for worship but not on the computers. He nods and stays glued to the monitor and fortunately for me Bonnie grabs me and pulls me away and holds up the mirror. She says she had been talking with him and found out that the night before his mother had been in a bad accident and was in the hospital and his uncle was coming to get him in a while from the center to take to the hospital, and I remember how his cousin had recently been shot in one of the gang related activities near us, and he himself had been bitten by a pack of wild dogs that have been dumped and roam our community center by the walking trail preventing often our residents from being able to use the trail especially if they are on foot and not on bicycles as many are who come through our community from elsewhere.
God was already present, through this 11 year old, and I was scurrying around ignoring God in my quest for God. I go back and tell him he can stay, ask about his mother, his family, and find out that he wants to be able to buy her a present at the hospital to take to her and he asks if there is some work he can to help us to earn the money for the gift. There always is at our Center of course, and so community and healing is reformed, deeper this time, and I am reminded how easy it is to forget the mission we are on, and the real meaning of this place, and thankful for the opportunity then, and the opportunities I get all the time but sometimes don't recognize, in this way of doing church missionally.
If you read Thom's sermon above, or other things and ever get to thinking that I must be this wonderfully spiritual, dedicated, sacrificial, serving missional leader, I hope this story, and of course my many other similar experiences trying to create a welcome table full of bread for all, will remind you that I am not, and that it means even more that I am not. For it is the crumbs under the table people and moments that truly create the miracles. And once we decide that we can do this anyway, this way of becoming church even when we will make missteps like the one I did and even worse ones, much worse, then maybe we will begin to see that wherever we are and in whatever circumstances we might find ourselves, and no matter how imperfect our leadership, that none of it will keep us from the love of God and that love will be with us as we create our own third places and missional relationships and initiatives in a diversity of ways. The crumbs under the table will sustain you in ways you can't imagine.
Thanks, blessings, see you soon, sorry these epistles don't come out more often, keep me in your prayers and us in your prayers and let us know how we can pray with you and for you; know that any day you can have a candle lit for you here at A Third Place or wherever we end up being in worship.
Ron
oh and please find ways to be our ambassadors to others as well.
We also had a good sermon written in part about us that inspires me even more. You can see it at www.revthom.blogspot.com under "The Abandoned Places of Empire" and to keep up with some of what is going on, and why, continue to go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.
Tomorrow we will be practicing resurrection by putting in a new welcome to turley sign and beautifying it, and working more at Cherokee School and maybe Greeley school gardens we have started, and cleaning up the trash dumped on our streets, and having a giveaway day for books and clothes and more at the center and have a free meal and a free performance of country music by Johnny and the Oklahomans.
Sunday we will have communion, pray the lords prayer as every week, talk about the resurrection and talk about God and Belief and God without Belief et al and why atheists are welcome here at our missional community without their having to feel constantly beseiged to change their minds, and we will see some powerful witnesses about resurrection from the progressive Christian www.livingthequestions.com DVD, and if weather permits we might do some of it up at the hilltop site where we are trying to raise funds for The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park amid the ruins. Come and join us either at the Center 6514 N. Peoria or at the hilltop at 60th and N. Johnstown at 10 am or when you can make it, and stay for our common meal together. Sundays here, as you will read below, are always full of surprises, and as my colleague and friend and mentor Carl Scovel has written, surprise is God's other name, truly, truly.
The title of this homily doesn't refer, necessarily, to the informal and homey way we do communion every Sunday morning, though we often comment how the mess we make of the bread of life everlasting is like how the body of Christ is not neat and orderly, well prepared and sanitarily presented and easy and conveniently consumed, but instead comes to us in fragments, crumbles, and gets all over us even when we try to keep it together.
The title of this homily refers to how the welcome table that is our lives, and our churches and associations, is a place for mutual transformation and conversion, one crumb at a time. The story behind the title is the story of Jesus' encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, from Mark 7. And it is our story, my story, in our missional community of faith here. It is not easy; mistakes happen; I slip back into default mode of scarcity too, and am comforted by this gospel story that it happens to Jesus too. More on that story and then about what happened last Sunday, a little story, that moves me still.
Jesus heads outside his perceived comfort zone, off toward Tyre in an area where the dominant culture is not Jewish but Gentile. He tries to hide, take a break for awhile, find his comfort zone, inside a house so no one would know he was there, but a woman alone, a mother, goes inside to confront him and plead for Jesus to heal her daughter.And Jesus dismissively says no, that the bread of his healing, that God, is only for those of his kind. Instead of letting that stand though, she, who risked much by going to him, risking rejection and shame, but driven by love and justice, says back to Jesus, as if quoting Jesus himself, holding up a mirror for him to see his self, says but even the dogs get the crumbs off the masters table. Even a little bread, even the crumbs, even those unintentionally given or found in surprising and shameful places and people, that will have healing too. And Jesus is caught up, converted, changed, and the woman's daughter is healed, and so too is Jesus.
Last Sunday, I am at the Center scurrying around trying to set up worship space, make copies, get things ready because I want our communion service to be one where the presence of God is experienced in our sharing of our lives, lighting candles, prayers, communion homily about Peter and Tabitha, spirited singing and then our watching the documentary and discussion about how we were a Church on the Wire, creating risky beauty acts in dangerous ways and places in secular society. I am in my zone or trying to get in my zone for worship, and then a woman with a daughter in need of healing slips into the house where I have other plans, am thinking about myself.
But this time the syrophoenician woman is instead an 11 year old boy who often comes to our center to be on the computers during the week and especially on Sunday, sometimes he comes in and out of worship with us, sometimes stays nearby on the computers, sometimes it gets a little distracting especially when it draws the other children away from our circle of worship. And this time, this Sunday, I really wanted worship to be that moving kind of experience. And so scurrying around I find him and tell him that today the community center will be closed and he can stay for worship but not on the computers. He nods and stays glued to the monitor and fortunately for me Bonnie grabs me and pulls me away and holds up the mirror. She says she had been talking with him and found out that the night before his mother had been in a bad accident and was in the hospital and his uncle was coming to get him in a while from the center to take to the hospital, and I remember how his cousin had recently been shot in one of the gang related activities near us, and he himself had been bitten by a pack of wild dogs that have been dumped and roam our community center by the walking trail preventing often our residents from being able to use the trail especially if they are on foot and not on bicycles as many are who come through our community from elsewhere.
God was already present, through this 11 year old, and I was scurrying around ignoring God in my quest for God. I go back and tell him he can stay, ask about his mother, his family, and find out that he wants to be able to buy her a present at the hospital to take to her and he asks if there is some work he can to help us to earn the money for the gift. There always is at our Center of course, and so community and healing is reformed, deeper this time, and I am reminded how easy it is to forget the mission we are on, and the real meaning of this place, and thankful for the opportunity then, and the opportunities I get all the time but sometimes don't recognize, in this way of doing church missionally.
If you read Thom's sermon above, or other things and ever get to thinking that I must be this wonderfully spiritual, dedicated, sacrificial, serving missional leader, I hope this story, and of course my many other similar experiences trying to create a welcome table full of bread for all, will remind you that I am not, and that it means even more that I am not. For it is the crumbs under the table people and moments that truly create the miracles. And once we decide that we can do this anyway, this way of becoming church even when we will make missteps like the one I did and even worse ones, much worse, then maybe we will begin to see that wherever we are and in whatever circumstances we might find ourselves, and no matter how imperfect our leadership, that none of it will keep us from the love of God and that love will be with us as we create our own third places and missional relationships and initiatives in a diversity of ways. The crumbs under the table will sustain you in ways you can't imagine.
Thanks, blessings, see you soon, sorry these epistles don't come out more often, keep me in your prayers and us in your prayers and let us know how we can pray with you and for you; know that any day you can have a candle lit for you here at A Third Place or wherever we end up being in worship.
Ron
oh and please find ways to be our ambassadors to others as well.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Church on a Wire
Church on a Wire, all welcome at all gatherings, A Third Place Community, 6514 N. Peoria Ave., 691-3223:
Sunday, April 25, worship 10 am, communion bread picked up at the Cherry Street Farmers Market will be apple cherry pecan from Great Harvest, and showing/discussing/exegeting for our beingness the documentary Man on a Wire; what is your church's destiny? passion? craziness? willingness to risk? and what is the wire where you must be?
Tuesday, organizing community with OU students and area residents free meal and planning and meeting 5:30 to 8 pm;
Thursday, April 29 Standing Against Racism;
Saturday May 1 Beautify Turley Day 8 am to 2 pm, free lunch for volunteer workers picking up trash and planting around the area and live country bluegrass and old time music from Johnny and the Oklahomans;
Sunday, May 2, worship and talking about God;
future sunday gatherings: church without walls blessing sites and tour of turley area, history, current, and visionary; worship cookout at obrien park; worship picnic touring Tallgrass Prairie Park; worship at labyrnth; worship with OpenTable UCC in Owasso, MCC in Dawson, and others through the summer; and of course all the ways we are church with two or more together throughout the week; check back here and http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/
Sunday, April 25, worship 10 am, communion bread picked up at the Cherry Street Farmers Market will be apple cherry pecan from Great Harvest, and showing/discussing/exegeting for our beingness the documentary Man on a Wire; what is your church's destiny? passion? craziness? willingness to risk? and what is the wire where you must be?
Tuesday, organizing community with OU students and area residents free meal and planning and meeting 5:30 to 8 pm;
Thursday, April 29 Standing Against Racism;
Saturday May 1 Beautify Turley Day 8 am to 2 pm, free lunch for volunteer workers picking up trash and planting around the area and live country bluegrass and old time music from Johnny and the Oklahomans;
Sunday, May 2, worship and talking about God;
future sunday gatherings: church without walls blessing sites and tour of turley area, history, current, and visionary; worship cookout at obrien park; worship picnic touring Tallgrass Prairie Park; worship at labyrnth; worship with OpenTable UCC in Owasso, MCC in Dawson, and others through the summer; and of course all the ways we are church with two or more together throughout the week; check back here and http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/
Friday, April 23, 2010
Consider This...Change This
Consider All This:
Our public community centers have been closed down, especially in our lowest income areas... Our state is dead last as the healthiest state…
And our 74126 zip code has the lowest life expectancy in our area, 14 years lower than just 8 miles straight south of us on Peoria Ave. ...
40 percent of the vacant residential properties in our two mile radius have been abandoned, not for rent or for sale, and this doesn't include the abandoned commercial properties…
We live in a healthy food desert…
A third in our area feel insecure about feeding themselves and their families with healthy food… The Tulsa Public Schools are ending the elementary science/nature classes in schools in our area even though our high school, McLain, has magnet science programs, meaning our own children will not be as prepared for the program.
Because of, and in spite of all this….We at A Third Place Community Center believe another way is possible…We believe, with your help, change is possible...
The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park Project of our A Third Place Community Center in Turley and Tulsa’s northern-edge With University of Oklahoma Design Studio and OU Graduate Social Work
Sustainable Community Development One Block at a Time. Taking a full block with 12 lots with abandoned houses and trash, in an area overlooking downtown Tulsa, bridging two ethnically diverse low income areas….Turning It into An Outdoor Center with Community Gardens, Community Kitchen, Community Classes and Meals, Family area. On an acre at 60th and N. Johnstown Ave.
But first, in order to begin, we are raising from local residents and global citizens $15,000 needed to purchase the property to begin the transformation. WE CAN ONLY DO IT WITH YOU…We need 100 people from around the world to give at least an average $100 to match what we have raised (you can give more; you can give less; we want as many owners as possible). Donate in honor or memory of someone who cared. WE CAN ONLY DO IT WITH YOU NOW, AND WITH YOUR FRIENDS. DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP ALSO?
To Donate Online Go To www.turleyok.blogspot.com. Use, debit cards or paypal. Or Send checks made out to A Third Place Community Foundation to 6514 N. Peoria Ave., Turley, OK 74126.
We are an all-volunteer grassroots new 501c3 non profit organization but already have a health clinic, library, computer center, food pantry, clothing room, lending library, gardens and orchard, community center with programs and events. We would love to partner with you. Thanks so much.
“Small Acts of Justice Done With Great Love Change The World”
A Third Place Community Foundation, 6514 N. Peoria Ave.
918-794-4637, 691-3223, 430-1150, thirdplaceturley@aol.com www.turleyok.blogspot.com
Our public community centers have been closed down, especially in our lowest income areas... Our state is dead last as the healthiest state…
And our 74126 zip code has the lowest life expectancy in our area, 14 years lower than just 8 miles straight south of us on Peoria Ave. ...
40 percent of the vacant residential properties in our two mile radius have been abandoned, not for rent or for sale, and this doesn't include the abandoned commercial properties…
We live in a healthy food desert…
A third in our area feel insecure about feeding themselves and their families with healthy food… The Tulsa Public Schools are ending the elementary science/nature classes in schools in our area even though our high school, McLain, has magnet science programs, meaning our own children will not be as prepared for the program.
Because of, and in spite of all this….We at A Third Place Community Center believe another way is possible…We believe, with your help, change is possible...
The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park Project of our A Third Place Community Center in Turley and Tulsa’s northern-edge With University of Oklahoma Design Studio and OU Graduate Social Work
Sustainable Community Development One Block at a Time. Taking a full block with 12 lots with abandoned houses and trash, in an area overlooking downtown Tulsa, bridging two ethnically diverse low income areas….Turning It into An Outdoor Center with Community Gardens, Community Kitchen, Community Classes and Meals, Family area. On an acre at 60th and N. Johnstown Ave.
But first, in order to begin, we are raising from local residents and global citizens $15,000 needed to purchase the property to begin the transformation. WE CAN ONLY DO IT WITH YOU…We need 100 people from around the world to give at least an average $100 to match what we have raised (you can give more; you can give less; we want as many owners as possible). Donate in honor or memory of someone who cared. WE CAN ONLY DO IT WITH YOU NOW, AND WITH YOUR FRIENDS. DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP ALSO?
To Donate Online Go To www.turleyok.blogspot.com. Use, debit cards or paypal. Or Send checks made out to A Third Place Community Foundation to 6514 N. Peoria Ave., Turley, OK 74126.
We are an all-volunteer grassroots new 501c3 non profit organization but already have a health clinic, library, computer center, food pantry, clothing room, lending library, gardens and orchard, community center with programs and events. We would love to partner with you. Thanks so much.
“Small Acts of Justice Done With Great Love Change The World”
A Third Place Community Foundation, 6514 N. Peoria Ave.
918-794-4637, 691-3223, 430-1150, thirdplaceturley@aol.com www.turleyok.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 22, 2010
ReDiscovering Jesus and Our Communities of Hope: Come to Revival/Retreat
Help us get the word out about this exciting event so people can make their plans now to attend. Spread the word.
Re-Discovering Jesus
and Communities of Hope
Revival/Retreat Sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship
www.uuchristian.org, a national movement founded 1945
Thurs. Oct. 14 to Sun. Oct. 17, 2010
Horizon Unitarian Universalist Church
1641 W. Hebron Pkwy, Carrollton, TX (972) 492-4940
All Welcome: Christian or not, Unitarian Universalist or not, believers, skeptics, seekers…gathering in the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus
Keynote Speakers…workshops….dynamic varied worship…small groups
service project…community eating…bookstore and more.
Featured Presenters:
“Re-Imagining Jesus along with Peter, Paul, and Mary and the other radical early disciples” by Dr. Brandon Scott
founding fellow of the Jesus Seminar, parables scholar, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, author of “Re-Imagine the World,” “Hear Then The Parable”, “Sound Mapping The New Testament,” “Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories” and others; frequent national speaker, and contributor to the DVD curriculums at http://www.livingthequestions.com/.
“Re-Imagining Our Houses of Hope: Progressive Faith in the 21st Century” by Rev. John Buehrens
pastor at First Parish of Needham, Mass, seminary teacher, past president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, author of “Understanding the Bible,” “A Chosen Faith” with Forrest Church, and “A House For Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion For America” with Rebecca Parker, "The Uses of Memory", historian, frequent guest lecturer.
Schedule and Registration Information:
Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010
1 pm Registration and Book Browsing and Orientation
2 to 5 pm Centering and Contemplative Prayer Workshop and More Activities
Dinners on own or in arranged groups
7 to 8:15 pm Opening Worship with Multi-Church Choir from Dallas Area UU Churches; worship leaders Rev. Dennis Hamilton and area UU ministers.
8:30 to 8:50 pm Evening Prayer of Daily Office—Rev. Sue Spencer, interim minister at UU Church of Danbury, Conn.
9 pm Social Time Out Option or Hospitality suite at host hotel
Friday, Oct. 15, 2010
8:30 to 8:50 am Morning Prayer Daily Office and Registration continues
9 am Welcome and Announcements
9:30 to 10:15 am “Spirit of Life” Small Group Sessions #1—Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger, coordinator
10:30 to 11:30 am Taize Worship—Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, First Unitarian Church, Oklahoma City
Noon Lunch at church offered as part of registration
and Communities of Hope
Revival/Retreat Sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship
www.uuchristian.org, a national movement founded 1945
Thurs. Oct. 14 to Sun. Oct. 17, 2010
Horizon Unitarian Universalist Church
1641 W. Hebron Pkwy, Carrollton, TX (972) 492-4940
All Welcome: Christian or not, Unitarian Universalist or not, believers, skeptics, seekers…gathering in the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus
Keynote Speakers…workshops….dynamic varied worship…small groups
service project…community eating…bookstore and more.
Featured Presenters:
“Re-Imagining Jesus along with Peter, Paul, and Mary and the other radical early disciples” by Dr. Brandon Scott
founding fellow of the Jesus Seminar, parables scholar, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, author of “Re-Imagine the World,” “Hear Then The Parable”, “Sound Mapping The New Testament,” “Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories” and others; frequent national speaker, and contributor to the DVD curriculums at http://www.livingthequestions.com/.
“Re-Imagining Our Houses of Hope: Progressive Faith in the 21st Century” by Rev. John Buehrens
pastor at First Parish of Needham, Mass, seminary teacher, past president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, author of “Understanding the Bible,” “A Chosen Faith” with Forrest Church, and “A House For Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion For America” with Rebecca Parker, "The Uses of Memory", historian, frequent guest lecturer.
Schedule and Registration Information:
Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010
1 pm Registration and Book Browsing and Orientation
2 to 5 pm Centering and Contemplative Prayer Workshop and More Activities
Dinners on own or in arranged groups
7 to 8:15 pm Opening Worship with Multi-Church Choir from Dallas Area UU Churches; worship leaders Rev. Dennis Hamilton and area UU ministers.
8:30 to 8:50 pm Evening Prayer of Daily Office—Rev. Sue Spencer, interim minister at UU Church of Danbury, Conn.
9 pm Social Time Out Option or Hospitality suite at host hotel
Friday, Oct. 15, 2010
8:30 to 8:50 am Morning Prayer Daily Office and Registration continues
9 am Welcome and Announcements
9:30 to 10:15 am “Spirit of Life” Small Group Sessions #1—Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger, coordinator
10:30 to 11:30 am Taize Worship—Rev. Jonalu Johnstone, First Unitarian Church, Oklahoma City
Noon Lunch at church offered as part of registration
1:30 to 2:45 pm Workshops:
Buddhist Practice and Christian Faith with Ruben Habito, professor of World Religions and Spirituality at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas
Queer Pirate Jesus Wheels Into Port with Rev. Naomi King, River of Grass UU, Florida
Film and Spirituality with Rev. Thom Belote, Shawnee Mission UU Church, Kansas
Universalist Christianity with Rev. Lillie Mae Henley, Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.
3 - 4:30 pm Mission Project and Reflection Time
4:30 to 5:30 Break
5:30 - 6:45 pm Dinner at the church as part of registration cost
7 to 8:30 pm Revival Lecture: “Peter, Paul, and Mary, and other radical early disciples of Jesus” by Dr. Bernard Brandon Scott, author, professor, Jesus Seminar Fellow
8:45 to 9 pm Evening Prayer—Rev. Sue Spencer
9 pm Social Time Out Option or Hospitality suite host hotel near church
Saturday, Oct. 16, 2010
8:30 to 8:50 am Morning Prayer and Registration
9 to 9:45 am “Spirit of Life” Small Group Sessions #2
10 am: Communion and Baptism Worship --- Rev. Tom Wintle, First Parish, Weston MA
If you are interested in participating in a faith formation process leading to baptism contact executivedirector@uuchristian.org asap.
Noon Lunch Program as part of registration costs
8:45 to 9 pm Evening Prayer—Rev. Sue Spencer
9 pm Social Time Out Option or Hospitality suite host hotel near church
Saturday, Oct. 16, 2010
8:30 to 8:50 am Morning Prayer and Registration
9 to 9:45 am “Spirit of Life” Small Group Sessions #2
10 am: Communion and Baptism Worship --- Rev. Tom Wintle, First Parish, Weston MA
If you are interested in participating in a faith formation process leading to baptism contact executivedirector@uuchristian.org asap.
Noon Lunch Program as part of registration costs
1:30 to 2:45 pm: Keynote: “Re-imagining our Houses of Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion in the 21st Century” by Rev. John Buehrens, author, pastor, past president of the UUA, former pastor of All Souls Church of New York City, First Unitarian of Dallas, and UU Church of Knoxville, TN.
3 to 4:15 pm: Workshops:
Keynote Talkback with John Buehrens
“Re-Imagine The Resurrection” with Keynoter Brandon Scott
UU Christianity 101 by Rev. Ron Robinson, UUCF Exec. Dir.
“Jesus In India” with Rev. Dennis Hamilton, Horizon UU Church, Texas.
4:30 pm: “Spirit of Life” Small Group Sessions #3
5:30 pm: Prayer and Healing Service—Rev. David Owen O’Quill, Micah’s Porch, Chicago, a new and emergent church; Rev. Owen O'Quill is former minister at the UU Church of Corpus Christi, TX
6:30 pm Dinners Out Together in Area restaurants
9 pm Hospitality Suite at a host hotel near the church
Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010
9 am Closing Worship Circle then Worship at Horizon or area UU churches
Registration will be available Online beginning July at www.uuchristian.org or
register now by mail by contacting executivedirector@uuchristian.org or UUCF at PO Box 6702 Turley, OK 74156; 918-691-3223 or 918-794-4637
5:30 pm: Prayer and Healing Service—Rev. David Owen O’Quill, Micah’s Porch, Chicago, a new and emergent church; Rev. Owen O'Quill is former minister at the UU Church of Corpus Christi, TX
6:30 pm Dinners Out Together in Area restaurants
9 pm Hospitality Suite at a host hotel near the church
Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010
9 am Closing Worship Circle then Worship at Horizon or area UU churches
Registration will be available Online beginning July at www.uuchristian.org or
register now by mail by contacting executivedirector@uuchristian.org or UUCF at PO Box 6702 Turley, OK 74156; 918-691-3223 or 918-794-4637
Many hotels are located close to the church within a five minute drive in nearby Lewisville, Texas; websites will be provided online for these and other lodging options.
Scholarships are available for young adults under 35 years, for seminarians, and possibly for others in need upon request. Contact the office for more information.
Full Time Fee: early discount by Sept. 19: $150; afterwards $175; three meals included if registration by Oct. 7.
Lecture Package Fee: For Friday evening/Saturday All Day, early discount by Sept. 19, $65; afterwards $75; Sat. lunch included if registration by Oct. 7. Cancellations accepted with refund until Oct. 7.
Please Add At least $50 to fee if you are able in order to provide scholarships for others, increasing our diversity and enriching the experience for all, in the spirit of Jesus.
Lecture Package Fee: For Friday evening/Saturday All Day, early discount by Sept. 19, $65; afterwards $75; Sat. lunch included if registration by Oct. 7. Cancellations accepted with refund until Oct. 7.
Please Add At least $50 to fee if you are able in order to provide scholarships for others, increasing our diversity and enriching the experience for all, in the spirit of Jesus.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
My Homage To Phillips Theological Seminary, or How an Ecumenical "Mainline" Seminary Can Be A Fertile Ground For Missional Organic Incarnational Stuff
A few days ago I was part of a panel at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa comprised of alumni from different years since 2001 and faculty discussing the transition years after graduation, how our ministries developed and how we were prepared or not for them, and what we had learned to pass on to those about to graduate. The bulk of it all is worthwhile but isn't the subject of this post. But it got me thinking about how at root all that we are involved with here in our missional organic incarnational way of being the church I learned at PTS. But bear with me first before I get to the what.
That is surprising because if you go to http://www.ptstulsa.edu/ and I hope you will and I hope you will pass it on to anyone interested not only in ministry but in religious and theological education and spiritual formation, and if there you do a search for terms such as missional church, church planting, incarnational church, organic church, you will get directed to zero pages. In this way, Phillips, as a seminary in the tradition of the "mainline" and "liberal" church, is not unusual, as seminaries often take their lead from the churches they are connected with, and as you probably know, particularly if you have read this blog over the years, such churches in general have not put resources into the cutting edge of being church. The fact that seminaries haven't been leading the churches in this arena, as they have in the "thinking" arena of theology and biblical studies, is also not a post for this post...but, ironically, as you will see, it is especially in the areas of theology and biblical studies of a progressive Christian bent that sowed the seeds of all this in me.
If you go to Fuller Theological Seminary's website, for example, church planting search pops up 52 entries; missional church 127 entries; organic church 10 entries; incarnational church 19. At Southern Baptist Theological in Louisville, church planting entries stopped showing at 256 with more possible. If you go to the Unitarian Universalist seminaries, it is much like at Phillips: church planting search at Meadville led to nothing about church planting, and missional church led to an interesting essay by Michael Hogue about the malaise and promise of liberal religion which of course is, in an absent sort of way, of course about the lack of church planting, but it wasn't anywhere directly "about" what we describe as the missional church; at Starr King same as at Phillips the search turned up nothing; the search engines found nothing about the phrases so they broke up the phrase such as incarnational and church in order to find some pages at all.
Do I think the situation needs to be reversed? Definitely Yes. I would love for the ethos to change so that at PTS and ML and SK etc. a search for those phrases would generate hundreds of links. I think the life of the liberal church depends on it. It should automatically go to courses each semester with those titles, or to how these manifestations of church are being intentionally incorporated into the existing courses be they theological, biblical, pastoral, practical, prophetic. The seminary needs to challenge the church to transform itself by giving its self away in the very form of the church, and needs to comfort the church by providing guidance and support as it does so. And there are seeds at work I know, and am sure; they just need to be watered more and perhaps with a sign pointing to their spot in the garden which is, of course, named seminary for what it seeds and plants and grows.
Having said all the above, here is my homage to Phillips in particular, and if what we do here can be germinated there, back when I was there even, then I believe it can sprout from anywhere through anyone, practically. We have done and are doing what we do because:
1. I learned, through 27 hours of study with Joe Bessler, to think, talk, breathe theology as a lens to see through: to see God, the world, the church, myself, etc. through the lens. Specifically to grasp the inherent and interdependent connections of the constructive theological worldview; to know that one's image of God will result in one's default mode image and purpose, for example, of the church. Somewhere else on this blog I have probably laid it all out; if not, another blog post will be required to show the linkages. But here is what I know: if God is that which makes all things new, that relates all things, that especially relates with those with the least power, if God is about creating, freeing, liberating, renewing, transforming, healing, forming community, if God is not about being some distant principle of abstraction but embodies and incarnates, and if we want to, to use an old wonderful term, obey that God, be in alignment with such a God, in right relationship with such a One, so that God can flow through us and what we open up with God, then we must shape ourselves and our communities in ways that are as in synch with such a God as we humanly can do or try. What would a people do and how would they behave in such an image? Call them a missional community of faithfulness or simply the church, they will turn themselves inside out. Now a lot of folks who follow the Christian Community Development Association's 3Rs of relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation do not have such an image of God, at least not exactly, or wouldn't use my kind of process relational liberationist language, though I think there can be some common ground, but what we do here in Turley and surrounding area is definitely a theological initiative of a certain kind.
2. Related to the more obvious theological understanding, I also got an education at PTS that used such books as the social work students I work with now used, principally John McKnight's Building Communities From the Inside Out. That was in Care in Christian Community class with Roy Steinhoff Smith whose book The Mutuality of Care I have revisited more than once since leaving PTS. His class helped me to look at a community, and the people in the community, from many different lens, which has given me insights in understanding the history and current systems in place and at work that have led this community to becoming so endangered. Speaking of systems, it was at PTS that I learned about family systems and congregational systems and all of those learnings have helped to see and helped to respond as we find the places within our place where we can intervene with a non-anxious presence of generosity amidst so much feelings and so much reality of scarcity. Thanks to Unitarian Universalist minister and former PTS professor and now minister of University Christian Church, independent congregational, in Wichita, Gary Blaine for his church administration and transformational church classes and especially for his ecumenical internship where we not only got to get out and study churches of all sizes and types in the Tulsa area but we put that study into readings of works by people like William Stringfellow, Reinhold Niehbur, and Bill Easum. Immersing myself during seminary in those early books by Easum and Bandy and after them by Leonard Sweet began to show me how church could be, and must become, different. My final seminary class was new techniques in conflict management; there can be no growth without change no change without conflict, so how you embody conflict matters if you want to be a part of something new and growing. And you can best use conflict well if you cultivate a core of non-anxious self-differentiated peaceful generous abundance, i.e. live in the Spirit, let prayer and practices grow in you, and so those classes in spiritual formation by Mady Fraser and Janet Parachin and Leslie Penrose were foundational. Speaking of Leslie, her former church Community of Hope in Tulsa was an early role model of missional church for me with its practice of giving away half of its offerings, and its location serving those abandoned by much of culture, in its case persons with HIV/AIDS and GLBT persons.
3. Finally, all the time in all that we do and dream of doing, I am grounded in what I know of Jesus and Paul. One of our short mission expressions, borrowed from The Simple Way in Philadelphia, is that we seek to make Jesus visible in the world. Well that of course all depends on what your understanding of Jesus is how that visibility will be known. And so to Brandon Scott and Rick Lowery and all the biblical teachers, what we are and do here is because of what you taught. I had started a church before I came to seminary, but I wouldn't have even gone to seminary I think if it hadn't been for a seminary Brandon Scott taught that wove in new understandings of the parables and of film; it wasn't just that I realized PTS could be a seminary home for me after that, but I returned home with a calling toward the "kingdom of God" because of the power of the parables. At PTS I grew in that understanding and calling coming from the parables even more; the parables that are about turning God upside down, Empires upside down, and inside out. And so it is the Jesus of the parables, as best and challenging as I can understand those, that we seek to make visible as best we can. And it was at PTS that I first heard about the new perspective, the original perspective, on and of the Apostle Paul. And about the shape and nature of his communities, and their radically hospitable way. Much of my study of Paul continued after my seminary years, but it started there. Jesus took the kingdom of God to the abandoned places of Empire and its God and to the abandoned people there; Paul took the spirit of that Jesus into the face of and into the shadow of the Empire itself to form communities of the Christ in the heart of the realms of Ceaser; he wrote the book, or letters, on "edge communities" and "shadow communities". And both of them were immersed in the lens of the Hebrew prophets before them, and so my study as a graduate assistant particularly with Rick Lowery in Genesis' creation liberation sabbath spirituality, and Jeremiah, and what it means to live as a resident alien, to be in exile but not completely dominated by that experience, all of that finds its way into envisioning community today.
There were other, post and extra seminary experiences that have shaped my growing understanding of church (time spent with Carl Scovel and the notion of the simplicities of the christian church; my wife Bonnie of course and exposure to ecological organic gardening and life; and the tipping point of a workshop with Reggie McNeal on the calling of mission)...but because I have sometimes written, as above, about the lack of intentionality in addressing some of these ways of being church that are in the more mainline and liberal churches and especially at their seminaries, I wanted to reflect really on what the grounding was that I received there that I go back to much more often than I do my shelves of books in my library (that I adore all about organic missional incarnational emerging etc), or to the online resources even.
It has been nine years since I was graduated from Phillips, and spoke during commencement about the calling toward a new kind of church for a new kind of times, and maybe one of the best things that PTS gave me was that I didn't then have a clear model of what I would be doing, no roadmap except the theological map, unlike some of the more popular church planting places of the more conservative where you might go through the training like becoming the owner of a franchise. Instead, what I had was all that I wrote about in the paragraphs above: time spent at an intersection of theology, culture, and scripture, and an even stronger committment to imitate and initiate the kingdom of God.
If you want to see where it has taken some of us, read below, or follow along at http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/ or www.facebook.com/revronrobinson and the FB page for A Third Place Community. End.
That is surprising because if you go to http://www.ptstulsa.edu/ and I hope you will and I hope you will pass it on to anyone interested not only in ministry but in religious and theological education and spiritual formation, and if there you do a search for terms such as missional church, church planting, incarnational church, organic church, you will get directed to zero pages. In this way, Phillips, as a seminary in the tradition of the "mainline" and "liberal" church, is not unusual, as seminaries often take their lead from the churches they are connected with, and as you probably know, particularly if you have read this blog over the years, such churches in general have not put resources into the cutting edge of being church. The fact that seminaries haven't been leading the churches in this arena, as they have in the "thinking" arena of theology and biblical studies, is also not a post for this post...but, ironically, as you will see, it is especially in the areas of theology and biblical studies of a progressive Christian bent that sowed the seeds of all this in me.
If you go to Fuller Theological Seminary's website, for example, church planting search pops up 52 entries; missional church 127 entries; organic church 10 entries; incarnational church 19. At Southern Baptist Theological in Louisville, church planting entries stopped showing at 256 with more possible. If you go to the Unitarian Universalist seminaries, it is much like at Phillips: church planting search at Meadville led to nothing about church planting, and missional church led to an interesting essay by Michael Hogue about the malaise and promise of liberal religion which of course is, in an absent sort of way, of course about the lack of church planting, but it wasn't anywhere directly "about" what we describe as the missional church; at Starr King same as at Phillips the search turned up nothing; the search engines found nothing about the phrases so they broke up the phrase such as incarnational and church in order to find some pages at all.
Do I think the situation needs to be reversed? Definitely Yes. I would love for the ethos to change so that at PTS and ML and SK etc. a search for those phrases would generate hundreds of links. I think the life of the liberal church depends on it. It should automatically go to courses each semester with those titles, or to how these manifestations of church are being intentionally incorporated into the existing courses be they theological, biblical, pastoral, practical, prophetic. The seminary needs to challenge the church to transform itself by giving its self away in the very form of the church, and needs to comfort the church by providing guidance and support as it does so. And there are seeds at work I know, and am sure; they just need to be watered more and perhaps with a sign pointing to their spot in the garden which is, of course, named seminary for what it seeds and plants and grows.
Having said all the above, here is my homage to Phillips in particular, and if what we do here can be germinated there, back when I was there even, then I believe it can sprout from anywhere through anyone, practically. We have done and are doing what we do because:
1. I learned, through 27 hours of study with Joe Bessler, to think, talk, breathe theology as a lens to see through: to see God, the world, the church, myself, etc. through the lens. Specifically to grasp the inherent and interdependent connections of the constructive theological worldview; to know that one's image of God will result in one's default mode image and purpose, for example, of the church. Somewhere else on this blog I have probably laid it all out; if not, another blog post will be required to show the linkages. But here is what I know: if God is that which makes all things new, that relates all things, that especially relates with those with the least power, if God is about creating, freeing, liberating, renewing, transforming, healing, forming community, if God is not about being some distant principle of abstraction but embodies and incarnates, and if we want to, to use an old wonderful term, obey that God, be in alignment with such a God, in right relationship with such a One, so that God can flow through us and what we open up with God, then we must shape ourselves and our communities in ways that are as in synch with such a God as we humanly can do or try. What would a people do and how would they behave in such an image? Call them a missional community of faithfulness or simply the church, they will turn themselves inside out. Now a lot of folks who follow the Christian Community Development Association's 3Rs of relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation do not have such an image of God, at least not exactly, or wouldn't use my kind of process relational liberationist language, though I think there can be some common ground, but what we do here in Turley and surrounding area is definitely a theological initiative of a certain kind.
2. Related to the more obvious theological understanding, I also got an education at PTS that used such books as the social work students I work with now used, principally John McKnight's Building Communities From the Inside Out. That was in Care in Christian Community class with Roy Steinhoff Smith whose book The Mutuality of Care I have revisited more than once since leaving PTS. His class helped me to look at a community, and the people in the community, from many different lens, which has given me insights in understanding the history and current systems in place and at work that have led this community to becoming so endangered. Speaking of systems, it was at PTS that I learned about family systems and congregational systems and all of those learnings have helped to see and helped to respond as we find the places within our place where we can intervene with a non-anxious presence of generosity amidst so much feelings and so much reality of scarcity. Thanks to Unitarian Universalist minister and former PTS professor and now minister of University Christian Church, independent congregational, in Wichita, Gary Blaine for his church administration and transformational church classes and especially for his ecumenical internship where we not only got to get out and study churches of all sizes and types in the Tulsa area but we put that study into readings of works by people like William Stringfellow, Reinhold Niehbur, and Bill Easum. Immersing myself during seminary in those early books by Easum and Bandy and after them by Leonard Sweet began to show me how church could be, and must become, different. My final seminary class was new techniques in conflict management; there can be no growth without change no change without conflict, so how you embody conflict matters if you want to be a part of something new and growing. And you can best use conflict well if you cultivate a core of non-anxious self-differentiated peaceful generous abundance, i.e. live in the Spirit, let prayer and practices grow in you, and so those classes in spiritual formation by Mady Fraser and Janet Parachin and Leslie Penrose were foundational. Speaking of Leslie, her former church Community of Hope in Tulsa was an early role model of missional church for me with its practice of giving away half of its offerings, and its location serving those abandoned by much of culture, in its case persons with HIV/AIDS and GLBT persons.
3. Finally, all the time in all that we do and dream of doing, I am grounded in what I know of Jesus and Paul. One of our short mission expressions, borrowed from The Simple Way in Philadelphia, is that we seek to make Jesus visible in the world. Well that of course all depends on what your understanding of Jesus is how that visibility will be known. And so to Brandon Scott and Rick Lowery and all the biblical teachers, what we are and do here is because of what you taught. I had started a church before I came to seminary, but I wouldn't have even gone to seminary I think if it hadn't been for a seminary Brandon Scott taught that wove in new understandings of the parables and of film; it wasn't just that I realized PTS could be a seminary home for me after that, but I returned home with a calling toward the "kingdom of God" because of the power of the parables. At PTS I grew in that understanding and calling coming from the parables even more; the parables that are about turning God upside down, Empires upside down, and inside out. And so it is the Jesus of the parables, as best and challenging as I can understand those, that we seek to make visible as best we can. And it was at PTS that I first heard about the new perspective, the original perspective, on and of the Apostle Paul. And about the shape and nature of his communities, and their radically hospitable way. Much of my study of Paul continued after my seminary years, but it started there. Jesus took the kingdom of God to the abandoned places of Empire and its God and to the abandoned people there; Paul took the spirit of that Jesus into the face of and into the shadow of the Empire itself to form communities of the Christ in the heart of the realms of Ceaser; he wrote the book, or letters, on "edge communities" and "shadow communities". And both of them were immersed in the lens of the Hebrew prophets before them, and so my study as a graduate assistant particularly with Rick Lowery in Genesis' creation liberation sabbath spirituality, and Jeremiah, and what it means to live as a resident alien, to be in exile but not completely dominated by that experience, all of that finds its way into envisioning community today.
There were other, post and extra seminary experiences that have shaped my growing understanding of church (time spent with Carl Scovel and the notion of the simplicities of the christian church; my wife Bonnie of course and exposure to ecological organic gardening and life; and the tipping point of a workshop with Reggie McNeal on the calling of mission)...but because I have sometimes written, as above, about the lack of intentionality in addressing some of these ways of being church that are in the more mainline and liberal churches and especially at their seminaries, I wanted to reflect really on what the grounding was that I received there that I go back to much more often than I do my shelves of books in my library (that I adore all about organic missional incarnational emerging etc), or to the online resources even.
It has been nine years since I was graduated from Phillips, and spoke during commencement about the calling toward a new kind of church for a new kind of times, and maybe one of the best things that PTS gave me was that I didn't then have a clear model of what I would be doing, no roadmap except the theological map, unlike some of the more popular church planting places of the more conservative where you might go through the training like becoming the owner of a franchise. Instead, what I had was all that I wrote about in the paragraphs above: time spent at an intersection of theology, culture, and scripture, and an even stronger committment to imitate and initiate the kingdom of God.
If you want to see where it has taken some of us, read below, or follow along at http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/ or www.facebook.com/revronrobinson and the FB page for A Third Place Community. End.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Dreamers and Doers: Donate Now Online to our Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Project, and More Below about The Next Huge Thing Here
Resurrection Still Happens!! Pass it on.
When our business culture lacks the moral fiber to invest in areas abandoned by businesses, when realtors continue to steer people away from our area, when most of those who do teach and police and work and do business here don't live here, when churches are locked throughout the week, when local state and federal government thinks so little of our capacities for greatness and community spirit they are afraid to ask us to pay for what we value and need the most, when our zipcode is the unhealthiest in the unhealthiest state in the U.S., when community centers are being closed by the city and neighborhoods are struggling to find ways to be neighborhoods, a small band of faithful dreamers and doers have been taking matters into our own hands and hearts and lives. Still, we need your help. Thank you.
Donate now online to our Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park Project. See www.turleyok.blogspot.com for how to do so safely and easily. Show the powers that be that nothing separates even the least of these from the Love of God.
This is being church. And stay tuned for more. When it rains God it pours. We met with bankers in a good visit yesterday at the old and also abandoned rundown 10,500 square foot old Methodist church building we have our eyes and heart set on to transform and expand into for an urban monastery with a progressive bent, with our free health clinic and classes and fitness for the body, the A Third Place Center food pantry and food justice center and community space and library and kitchen and giving space for the mind, and the sanctuary for worship and prayer and meditation and meetings for the heart and soul. And we have space there for a community garden too, and perhaps a community garden office center in the old parsonage.
It was just three years ago our church opened up itself to become A Third Place Center in the spirit of incarnation. I can't believe myself what all has happened since. We weren't sure we'd pull even that first version off. But putting 100 percent into mission provided the right soil for growth. We still end up every month at zero or below in the bank but continue to grow.
Just imagine what might happen in the next three years because of what happens this month. Now envision three hundred years.
It has happened before (see Rodney Starks The Rise of Christianity: How a radical fringe Jesus movement on the margins became the dominant force in the Roman Empire in 300 years, or some such subtitle). It can happen again.
When our business culture lacks the moral fiber to invest in areas abandoned by businesses, when realtors continue to steer people away from our area, when most of those who do teach and police and work and do business here don't live here, when churches are locked throughout the week, when local state and federal government thinks so little of our capacities for greatness and community spirit they are afraid to ask us to pay for what we value and need the most, when our zipcode is the unhealthiest in the unhealthiest state in the U.S., when community centers are being closed by the city and neighborhoods are struggling to find ways to be neighborhoods, a small band of faithful dreamers and doers have been taking matters into our own hands and hearts and lives. Still, we need your help. Thank you.
Donate now online to our Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park Project. See www.turleyok.blogspot.com for how to do so safely and easily. Show the powers that be that nothing separates even the least of these from the Love of God.
This is being church. And stay tuned for more. When it rains God it pours. We met with bankers in a good visit yesterday at the old and also abandoned rundown 10,500 square foot old Methodist church building we have our eyes and heart set on to transform and expand into for an urban monastery with a progressive bent, with our free health clinic and classes and fitness for the body, the A Third Place Center food pantry and food justice center and community space and library and kitchen and giving space for the mind, and the sanctuary for worship and prayer and meditation and meetings for the heart and soul. And we have space there for a community garden too, and perhaps a community garden office center in the old parsonage.
It was just three years ago our church opened up itself to become A Third Place Center in the spirit of incarnation. I can't believe myself what all has happened since. We weren't sure we'd pull even that first version off. But putting 100 percent into mission provided the right soil for growth. We still end up every month at zero or below in the bank but continue to grow.
Just imagine what might happen in the next three years because of what happens this month. Now envision three hundred years.
It has happened before (see Rodney Starks The Rise of Christianity: How a radical fringe Jesus movement on the margins became the dominant force in the Roman Empire in 300 years, or some such subtitle). It can happen again.
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