A week and a half ago Abbie and I attended a Pastor-Spouse Retreat at the Mohican State Park lodge in Northeast Ohio.  The time included four different sessions by John and Naomi Lederach.  John and Naomi have been married for 55 years.  John pastored for about 15 of those earlier  years and they have done couples counseling more recently.  They also lived in Northern Ireland for a number of years working at reconciliation efforts between Catholics and Protestants.  Here are a few notes from one thing they talked about as it relates to the marriage relationship:

They talked about how the family systems that each of us come from influence what we think to be normal.  Each of us carry around, often unconsciously, assumptions, values, hang-ups, perspectives, and gifts that we gained from our family of origin.  They gave the image of each of us walking around with a funnel above our heads.  In my funnel are my parents, my siblings, and further up that funnel as it widens out are their parents, siblings, and other family members.  Inside the funnel are also mentors, teachers, coaches, and peers who have shaped my character and habits. 

This reminded me of an essay my brother has written in a different context which says, “ten thousand folks are floating around in the grey soup in our heads – aunt, uncles, grandparents, pastors, old ladies from church, school teachers, friend’s parents, authors we’ve read and loved, men and women we’ve read about…They’re all in there, thousands of them, telling you where your home is at, who you are, where you’re going, whether you’re doing all right.” 

When two people get married, there are two different worlds that are coming together – two different funnels that start complementing and contradicting each other – two containers of that grey soup that start merging and mixing and speaking to each other, moving into the same house.  Each person has their own version of what normal has been, yet each person, in the marriage covenant, makes the commitment to spend their lifetimes working at what the new normal will be that they establish in their own household, their own relationship.

John and Naomi told different stories about what this has looked like for them.  A very basic example – Naomi’s family celebrated birthdays in a big way, with presents and surprises and parties being the norm while John’s mother wouldn’t make a big deal of them.  When they were married Naomi had certain expectations of how John would celebrate her birthday that didn’t come close to being fulfilled.  It took them a while to talk through these differences and to learn what brought the other person joy.

This wasn’t brand new information for us but was good to hear again and acknowledge that these things don’t go away after the first several years of marriage.  Abbie and I enjoyed being able to take some time to talk about each other’s funnels, what we appreciate about each other, and what the other person could do a little better at!  These are valuable conversations for couples to have.

Over the last three years+ we have had the privilege of ministering together.  Recently our family was thrilled to agree to a covenant with the congregation that extends the next five years.  As a part of this process, CMF Council has invited me to share with the congregation my vision for the next five years for the life of the congregation.  I’m please to be able to do this this Sunday after church, which will involve my sharing of my vision and provide opportunities for table discussions following to get a sense of congregational priorities.  Below is a condensed version of that vision I will be sharing with you on Sunday. With prayers and good hope for the years to come.  

Church life can be pictured as a set of three overlapping circles – Community, Worship, and Mission.  The place where all of these circles share space is where Formation/Transformation happens, which is at the heart of what we are about as the Body of Christ.  Below are ways that I envision formation and transformation happening among us at Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship over the next five years:

Community

In Community we will nurture one another and share our time, gifts, and resources for the good of all.

+ We will continue developing a culture of openness and honesty in discussing hard issues, extending grace toward each other, agreeing and disagreeing in love.  We will have opportunity for much practice on this as we respond to the Columbus Resolution which encourages us to have dialogue around how we welcome and relate with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, LGBT, persons.

+ Journey Groups could become a strong core of how we grow together spiritually.  These groups provide an opportunity to gather around a particular focus (telling spiritual journey stories, book study, Bible study, sharing and prayer) and go deeper in our walk with God and one another.  

+ Cincinnati Mennonite has great potential to grow numerically and this can be a good thing.  There are many people hungry for a spiritual home where peace, service, and authenticity before each other and God are valued.

+ We will develop a strong website with informative content and attractive images .
Worship

Through Worship, we will be centered on the love of God and formed into disciples of Jesus Christ.

+ We will continue to welcome and celebrate many gifts in worship and approach worship not only as a place for gifts to be shared, but for gifts to be discovered.  Willingness, not perfection, is the key to joyful worship. 

+ We have a regular order of service that works well for us.  We can also experiment with different worship forms and orders such as Taize style, services of primarily silence, services of song, etc. 

+ Given the overwhelming strength of mass culture in forming our values (values that often reflect the sins of materialism, violence, and individualism), I wonder whether we would be aided in the formative nature of worship if we allow particular symbols and rituals to become more frequent and pronounced – symbols that tell us who we are and who God is for us.  Examples include more frequent communion, more reference to the meaning of our baptism (having water visibly present in our worship and referring to it? – “Remember your baptism”), frequent remembering of our covenant which we sign, liturgy that gets repeated from week to week, more spaces for extended silence….    

Mission

Through Mission, we will discover where the Spirit is active among and around us and join in that work.

+ Cincinnati Mennonite will continue to minister at the margins even as we relate to the center.  We excel at ministering to those at the margins theologically and we have many opportunities to minister with those at the margins economically.  We relate to the center of our denomination and conferences and our places of work enable us to relate to the center of city institutions.

+ I would love to see us use our church properties for creative mission in a way that is economically sustainable.  Opening a Mennonite Voluntary Service unit is a strong option we should explore.  Orienting the volunteer positions toward involvement in the arts would be an extension of the mission of Mennonite Arts Weekend and a next step for how our congregation could become a leader in encouraging the flourishing of the arts.

+ We will continue to nurture relationships with the seminaries and work toward having Cincinnati be a place where ministry interns come to experience training in urban ministry. 

+ The opportunities for building relationships and ministering with neighbors in the Oakley community around our church are abundant.  In five years it would be wonderful if several CMF households are living in this neighborhood and sharing life with each other and neighbors.  We may also wish to consider opening a position of Neighborhood Minister – a staff person or volunteer whose job is to extend our presence in the neighborhood.

This fall I’ve been able to be a part of the adult forum conversation.  For those of you who have been faithfully teaching Sunday school to our young people and/or unable to make the discussion, here is some of what has been covered:  We’ve been talking about how we read the Bible, what the Bible means to us, and, more specifically, the Bible as literature — a complex, intricate, dazzling, and often puzzling piece of literature at that.  I’ve enjoyed having the chance to teach two of the classes.  One of the classes I brought in 10-12 different pieces of writing that I have around our house, all from different genres: a novel, satire, a letter from a friend, a pictorial history of African Americans, poetry, myths, a political cartoon, a legal document (old version of health insurance policy!), etc.  We divided these up and each person took time to leaf through their writing as well as a passage of scripture that corresponded to that genre.  We then discussed what it was like to see the Bible as containing all these genres of writing and how that affects how we might read it and the expectations we bring to certain portions of scripture.

During the other class session we considered why it is that we have four gospels, four perspectives on the telling of Jesus’ ministry, as opposed to one official version.  Or, another way of asking it would be “Why just four?”  Why not 40?  To note the differences in how each gospel goes about introducing Jesus, we compared and contrasted the first chapter of each of the four gospels — four different ways of bringing us into “gospel,” good news.

John Kampen also taught a class, regarding the relationship of the Old and New Testaments.  He asked us to recognize there at the time of the writing of the New Testament there were many different ways of understanding the present scriptures.

Keith Lehman has been the main teacher and he has led us in different exercises.  This last week he noted that he felt like he was asking us to pull apart the scriptures and see what they look like when we do that.  He also recognized that we may need to spend some time on putting them back together!  During one of the sessions Keith had us look at the biblical flood story alongside the older Babylonian version of the story.  Comparing these two stories helped shed light on the context into which the biblical flood story was speaking to.

Keith will continue teaching this class for two more sessions and then as a closing session on Nov. 22nd I’ll attempt to tell the broad story of scripture and connect some of the dots for how all of these small parts fit into an overarching narrative.

In Article IV of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective on the Bible it says, “The Bible is the essential book of the church.  Through the Bible, the Holy Spirit nurtures the obedience of faith to Jesus Christ and guides the church in shaping its teaching, witnessing, and worship.  We commit ourselves to persist and delight in reading, studying, and meditating on the Scriptures.”

This class has helped bring out some of the varying relationships we all have with the Bible.  Our backgrounds have a major influence on this since many of us are formed by and reactive to what we have come to see as the good and the bad of how we have been taught to read it.  It may be an interesting Journey Group discussion, or another forum topic at some point, for people to tell their Bible autobiography, how one’s relationship with scripture has changed and developed over the years.  Let’s commit ourselves to persist and delight in how the Scriptures help form us as a community of faith.

This video is of a London performance of Leonard Cohen on this same tour, with the song “Hallelujah.” 

“I do not know if we will pass this way again, so we’re going to give you everything we’ve got tonight.” 

This was how Leonard Cohen started his concert last night in Columbus, which lasted a little over three hours.  Abbie and I have been fans for a while now.  We first discovered him in a sideways kind of way – when we saw the first Shrek movie and were mesmerized by a version of the song “Hallelujah” that played during one of the scenes.  Coming back from the theater that night we did an internet search and discovered it was written by a Canadian folk singer named Leonard Cohen, and we’ve been hooked ever since.  October is Abbie’s birthday month, and the concert last night was a fun surprise gift.    

Leonard Cohen is 75 years old now, so it may very well be the last time he travels through Columbus for a concert.   

His music is good – especially with the nine piece band of extremely gifted musicians that are touring with him – but I think of him more as a poet who sets his words to music.  His songs carry a deep longing for love that shows up in both spiritual and sexual form.  He somehow manages to speak to a haunting kind of loneliness right alongside the playfulness of one who has learned to not take himself too seriously.  In one of his songs he says, “There is a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.”

He is a Jew and his songs contain plenty of biblical allusions.    His song that most resembles a prayer is called “If It Be Your Will” and is the song Abbie and I sang together during my ordination service.  It starts, “If it be your will / that I speak no more / and my voice be still / as it was before / I will speak no more / I shall abide until / I am spoken for / if it be your will.

Some of the most enduring images of the concert for me will be several of his gestures that he made throughout the evening.  As he sang he often went down to his knees.  A review I read before suggested that he was offering each song as some kind of sacrament.  He also gave long bows to each of his musicians when they played solos and when he introduced them.  When he would exit the stage he skipped and danced.  When I am 75, if I can embody that amount of grace, reverence, playfulness, and poetry, it will be a sign that I came through life pretty well.

Starting today I’ll be spending most of the rest of the week downtown at the Convention Center.  The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) has a conference in a different US city each year and this year it is in Cincinnati.  I first became aware of CCDA while taking some classes in Chicago during seminary days and was impressed with their commitment to improving communities through a holistic approach.  CCDA people thought of ministry as happening right in their own neighborhood.  The eight principles of CCDA are: Church-Based, Presence in the Community (Relocation), Reconciliation, Listening to the Community, Wholistic Approach, Empowerment, Leadership Development, and Redistribution.  CCDA, which is really just an association of individuals, churches and groups around the country doing this kind of ministry, began with the work of John Perkins, an African American from rural Mississippi who decided, rather than leave his community after receiving his education, to come back and help it grow.  CCDA came about as a result of him beginning to pull together different groups with the same kind of vision for ministry.  By way of mission statement:  “The mission of CCDA is to inspire, train, and connect Christians who seek to bear witness to the Kingdom of God by reclaiming and restoring under-resourced communities.”  I’ve never been to a CCDA event and this week I hope to learn some things that others are experiencing in their settings as well as connect with Cincinnati people who are doing this kind of ministry. 

One of the presenters at the conference, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, will bring the message this Sunday at Cincinnati Mennonite. 

There are some familiar names who are speaking in the evenings at CCDA in the Convention Center and their talks are free and open to the public.  Thursday evening is Jim Wallis.  Friday is Bart Campolo.  Saturday is Shane Claiborne.  The evening session is from 7-9pm.

Another wonderful, non-related event going on in Cincinnati that you may wish to catch is that Walter Brueggemann, a leading Old Testament scholar, is speaking Wedneday evenings through November 4^th at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Anderson – the church that former CMF pastor Ann Nofziger and her husband Don now attend.  Brueggemann is speaking on “The Other Way.”  Look at the website http://www.onecommontable.com/ for more info.  There is a free meal served before the talk and child care is provided, as well as children’s programming for school aged kids.  Abbie and I went last week and found it to be excellent (including the meal and the child care!).  A little more description from the website: “Forget everything you’ve been taught because there is another way. There is another way of looking at life, families, relationships, careers, and even another way of looking at the bible. Join world renowned Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, for a series of extraordinary lectures using ancient texts that will help us to imagine the world in a different way. In a time when life rushes by and we run like mice on a wheel, always on the move yet never getting anywhere, there is another way.”

Sitting on my desk, finally uncovered after being on the bottom of a stack for a couple weeks, is Timeline II: living echo of Menno Simons.  This is a new resource recently made available from Mennonite Publishing Network.  The first timeline that it is following charted the Anabaptist movement from its 16^th century beginnings through the centuries and showed the points where different groups either splintered or merged (mostly splintered, unfortunately) to form the various Mennonite and Amish groups that exist today.

Timeline II takes a different approach.  Rather than being something to hang on the wall it is an accordion style large booklet with one side of the accordion composed of pictures of Mennonite worship houses around the world and the other composed of historical movements beginning in 1500.  The history part has two columns: on the left it recounts the events of world and broader church history at that time and on the right, larger and more colorful column, it contains maps and notes of what was occurring in the Anabaptist movement.  The first three entries on the left are “1500: Portuguese land on Brasillian coast; 1502: Wittenburg Prince Frederik founds university: Augustinian Martin Luther will be one of the lecturers: 1506: Rome starts construction of St Peter’s, partly financed by the sale of indulgences.”  The first entry on the right, 1519, notes Ulrich Zwingli preaching sermons and reading the Bible together with the young students who will become the first Swiss Anabaptists.  Completely unfolded the timeline is apparently over 100 inches long.  Here is some of what the creators of this new timeline say about the work:

“Many Anabaptists died in direct and well-recorded martyrdom.  Many more toiled on courageously, having opted for the way of peace, many never finding peace again.  Few called themselves Anabaptist or inhabited areas of traditional Mennonite settlement.  Through this extended timeline we can only hope to stimulate awareness that the Anabaptist Mennonite Community is part of a unique, recurrent, and global witness, flowing through time and place…Too often the church commissions only ‘most ideal and moral’ volunteers for mission and service, pulling them back as soon as they show fatigue or doubt.  Mennonites are not unique in that sense.  Their communities grow, break up or stay together like many others do for a wide variety of reasons, such as happy families, safe homesteads, food security, and freedom of thought.  They flee along with others and they live through the same crises of faith.  Many of their personal stories are too powerful to be told, buried with their bearers before they mature into testimonies that can be shared in service of peace.  We hardly have a story tradition to help us come to terms with our very human experience.  We think the best echo of our stories is to be found in solidarity, hence vulnerable meeting with the dignified other, beyond our safe congregational yard.  We want to contribute some stories to help fill this gap and encourage others to share their experience.”  

More info about the timeline, as well as purchasing info if you would like one in your own home can be found HERE.  An interesting note, the website reports “Paper for the covers are fabricated at the 17th century paper mill ‘De Schoolmeester’ in Westzaan, The Netherlands, using timeless wind energy.”

* The memorial service for Jan Abel will be held at CMF at 4:00pm next Tuesday, October 13th. All who attend are welcome to stay for the Community Meal in the church basement afterward.*

Yesterday in the mail the church office received the Delegate Assembly Minutes from the Mennonite Church USA Convention 2009 in Columbus. I found it worthwhile reviewing the three major resolutions that were passed.

One was called Resolution on National Healthcare Policy: Next Step. The resolution reiterates our belief in God’s generous purposes in seeking the shalom of all creation and protecting the more vulnerable. It resolved: “We will ask our members and congregations to urge their congressional representatives to support legislation that would extend access to healthcare to all Americans, particularly the poor and disadvantaged, while we engage local healthcare needs.” On a related note, the Corinthian Plan, which will see that all pastors of participating congregations will receive health coverage, has been affirmed to move forward. It is estimated that this will enable at least 50 current Mennonite pastors without health insurance to be covered.

A second resolution was called Statement Against Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery. That statement addresses sex trafficking and labor trafficking and notes that our faith in God who created human beings in the divine image calls us “to join with other Christian denominations in a united voice against the evil of human trafficking.”

A third resolution was called Resolution on following Christ and growing together as communities even in conflict. The resolution noted disagreement and ongoing pain over issues of human sexuality and affirmed the church’s commitment to ongoing dialogue around such issues. By way of follow-up, a group is forming at CMF to brainstorm how we can engage in conversation together regarding our own experiences in relating with gay and lesbian persons and what that means for us as a congregation.

To access the full text of these three resolutions, click HERE.

Last week I attended the Central District Conference Fall Resource Day. CDC hosts two Resource Days a year and it is a time for pastors to come together and focus on a particular area of ministry, to share together, and to learn about what’s going on with CDC. At an informal lunch conversation we got onto the topic of technology and communication. There were six of us at the table and we each offered our thoughts about the benefits and struggles with using technology, particularly email, but also other kinds of technology, in church life. Here were some of the things mentioned:
- A pastor around 60 years of age reflected on how incredibly much pastoring has changed in the last 20 years due to communication issues. He spends much less time on the phone than he used to (much more email) and feels the loss in relational closeness. He wondered if things had moved too fast for him to keep up and it was time for him to be done, or if things are too email oriented and we should intentionally try for voice, face-to-face, interaction as much as possible.
- We concluded there are roughly three different groups of people in congregations in how they relate with email – those who do not have it and probably never will (mostly older), those who are somewhat or very comfortable with email, and those who are post-email and prefer social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and texting (mostly 20 yrs old and below). How to keep in touch with all three groups?
- We all felt that email takes an enormous amount of time, but has certain advantages, such as being able to communicate with groups of people at a time.
- Most agreed that email can be a poor and laborious way to make decisions when it is a one-on-one situation. Sometimes picking up the phone is much faster and efficient.
- We all felt the church should be a place where we think critically about communication and its effects on our relationships.
- Several of us noted that our worship services use little or no electronic media, such as having a screen to project music or announcements or power point. And we felt that many people in the congregation probably felt pretty strongly about it staying that way. We wondered if people are so bombarded with electronic media in other parts of life that the church becomes a haven and a rest from it.
I was the youngest in the group which meant that email communication was the most normal for me. I don’t know what it would be like to pastor without it. But these are all questions I’ve thought about before and it was great to hear of other’s experiences. Hopefully congregations, ours included, can be places where we use the technology most conducive to good communication and building meaningful relationships that have depth. I welcome your thoughts – by email, phone, blog comment, conversation over coffee, or stop by the office, or text me, or………..

I like blessings.  I like giving them, and it’s pretty cool to receive a blessing too.  It’s one of the powerful things that congregations experience.  In our life together we get to share in blessing new babies, youth coming of age, marriages, ordination, members involved in denominational leadership.  In offering a blessing to something or someone, we get to agree together, in the presence of God, that “This is good,” or “This is holy.”

These past few days I have had the opportunity to be involved in what could be called unofficial blessings.  Last week a woman in the neighborhood died who, although she never came to our Community Meal because of her inability to leave her home, regularly received carry-out meals from friends.  She had requested to be cremated and the family had no memorial service for her.  Last Wednesday, upon request of her friends, and with permission from her husband, we held a brief service of remembrance for her outside her apartment.  We prayed, we thanked God for the blessings of her life, and we signed a card for her husband.  An unofficial memorial service.

At the end of last week a young woman and her boyfriend who live a block from our church and who have been attending Community Meal welcomed a healthy baby girl into the world.  Yesterday Abbie and I went over to their apartment, heard the birth story, and got to hold the child.  At their invitation I also offered a prayer of blessing for the child and them as parents, acknowledging the holy calling of parenting and the blessedness of this child.  An unofficial child blessing.

Both of these things happened outside the walls of the church, and at the fringes of our congregation’s web of relationships.  Does that make them unofficial, whatever that may mean?  It seems that the act of blessing one another often happens in a similar way – outside the programmed, structured nature of congregational life and within the relational world which we inhabit.  Here I’m thinking of blessing in a much broader sense than its ceremonial form – blessing others for the good that we see in them.  I’ve heard some people refer to what we do on Sunday mornings as “just practicing” for the rest of life.  This can apply to the blessings that we offer.