Feel the Passion: Anger
A reflection for our Holy Week lunches held at various churches in town…
“Feel The Passion”
Mark 11:11,12,15-19
Yesterday Rev. Peter invited us into the story of ancient Jerusalem, to walk alongside Jesus as he entered the city; to see the crowd; to engage our senses as we enter into this Holy Week.
Our themes in past years for this week have been the places Jesus gone and the people who were part of the week. This year we look at the various emotions as the week progresses.
In many of our churches, Sunday was a day of joy as we celebrated with palm branches the entry of Jesus to the city of Jerusalem, the time when everyone was cheering him on as he was expected to come and make things new. To take his place as King of the Jews, removing the Roman occupiers and reestablishing the church. read more…
A little April Fool’s fun!
Had some fun with the congregation this morning for April Fool’s day.
Want to see what I did? Check out the bulletin!
Glorious Mess – Review
The story of Jonah is an interesting view of a wrestling match with God about following his call on our lives and seeking to live out what we want to do. Often we overlook how the story reflects on our lives today.
This will come to an end when you read Glorious Mess: Encountering God’s Relentless Grace for Imperfect People by Mike Howerton.
Howerton takes us on a journey along with Jonah and helps us to realize that the messes Jonah finds himself in are also the same messes we find ourselves in. Using a great sense of humour and an engaging writing style, Howerton shows us through his own personal reflections and confessions, none of us are immune to life’s temptations and mistakes.
But, like Jonah, we can be glorious messes when we let God step in and clean us up and bring us back to Him.
If you find yourself struggling with finding yourself in a mess, not sure how you got there or how to get out, pick up Howerton’s book, you’ll be given hope, and you’ll have a smile on your face while reading it!
Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
Available at your favourite bookseller from Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
Coming Soon
“Coming Soon”
John 12:20-33
It’s that time of year now. The time when the places like Facebook and news stories begin to fill up with pictures of people’s gardens and the plants beginning to poke up through the soil after a long winter’s rest.
We’ve had a brief bit of special weather the last week, only maybe not quite so dramatic here in Cape Breton as in other parts of the country. It was so nice in some places this past week that farmers are actually worried about their potential crops. They are worried that things will begin to bud too soon, and if there’s another bad cold spell, it could mean a lot of damage to their crops.
So maybe here in Cape Breton we were actually a little lucky in that the high temperatures lasted only a day.
But it is the time of year when we begin to look forward to spring. We long for the flowers to begin blooming. We long for warmer weather so we can put away our heavy boots and coats. We just want to be outdoors once in a while.
Pretty soon things will begin to bloom, and bloom they will. Trees will begin to burst in leaves, the lawn will begin to grow and flowers will pop with colour. It’s such a wonderful time of year when this starts to happen. It just seems to lighten the soul as we come of out the dark, two tone, grey and white season of winter.
The song we sang this morning, “In the Bulb There Is a Flower”, seemed like a good one to sing this first Sunday of Spring. We’ve been teased with some good weather, but it gives us hope that soon we’ll see much more days like the ones we had last week. read more…
You Learn Something New…
You know the old saying, “You learn something new every day”?
Well, I learned the following, which was entirely new to me.
“Young people today aren’t joining the United Church of Canada because of the inaccessible language of our old doctrine.”
That’s a paraphrase, but it’s the core of the message someone shared last night at our monthly presbytery meeting.
Really?
Do people in the church really believe this? Do people seriously believe that young people today are looking to the Basis of Union of the United Church of Canada in order to determine if this is a church they want to join?
It actually takes work to find this document. If you go the the United Church of Canada website, and to into the section About Us, then Beliefs, there is no mention of our Basis of Union and the 20 Articles of Faith which are the founding doctrine of the United Church of Canada adopted in 1925.
To find our “official” doctrine, you need to know to download our Manual (our policy document) in which to find these statements. Who in their right mind is going to download a policy manual looking for statements of belief when you would think you could just look to that section of our website that says “Beliefs”?
If you are one of these people who believe that a document, only known to the people who are hardcore church involved people, is keeping young people away from the church, you are delusional.
You want to know what is keeping young people away from the church? Get ready because apparently I’m going to tell you for the first time right now. Get your pen and paper, get a comfortable in your seat. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
Ready? Ok, here it is…
Meaning.
That’s it!
They are looking for meaning. They want to know that going to your church is giving them meaning in life. They want to know that taking an hour out of their extremely busy lives is going to be worth it. They want to know that they are going to learn. They want to know their children are going to get a good grounding in faith based values. They want to know they can help make a difference.
It’s that simple.
Yet, for many churches there is no meaning. We gather on Sunday mornings, say some words that we seem to think might be important, but then that’s all we see or hear of it until the following Sunday. There’s no action plan. There’s no continuity. There’s nothing to say we are acting out of what we profess to believe on Sunday over the rest of the week.
Here’s what we offer young people.
- Something to do on Sunday morning besides sitting in a cold rink or a lying in a warm bed
- Meetings discussing budgets and budget driven business related to keeping the church open
- A chance to take part in fund-raisers to help keep said building open
Does this sound like fun to any of you?
It doesn’t to me.
Meaning.
Doctrine? You have got to be kidding me.
Give us meaning.
*Photo from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1162222