Being Evangelists

During Diocesan Convention this year, Bishop O’Neill offered several reflections on the mission of the Church as it is being envisioned by key leaders such as the Standing Committee. A central theme in all these reflections was the idea that we as people of faith have something the world desperately needs, something for which people yearn. In a nutshell, this treasure of ours is a relationship with the living God.

As Episcopalians we might hate the word evangelism because it calls up in our minds images of tent revivals and altar calls. Bishop O’Neill’s response to this is, “Get over it. Get over it and get on with it.” He says, in essence, we have abundant water in a drought-besieged land, and it’s wrong not to give others the directions to the well.

It used to be true that the vast majority of U.S. citizens actively worshiped God in a Christian church. There were many faith groups in any given community, and the primary decision a spiritual seeker would need to make was which one to join. That’s no longer true. An enormous number of people in this country do not participate in public worship. A huge number know almost nothing about Christianity. The Church is moving into a time similar to the era before Constantine decreed Christianity the State religion: Christianity is no longer what everyone does, in fact it’s often viewed as pretty weird. For that reason, it’s no longer enough for us to open the doors of the church and wait for people to come to us. There’s nothing to draw them in; they know nothing about us.

Evangelism is nothing more than lighting people up, one by one, with the awareness of God’s love and desire to be in relationship with them – not with just anyone but with them in particular. I’m as twitchy as the next person when it comes to shouting about my faith to innocent people who are minding their own business. But that’s not what’s being asked. It’s not about notches on the sandal straps indicating how many converts we can claim. It’s not about numbers of people in the pews on Sunday.

My model is from Acts 8, the deacon Philip on the lonely road outside Jerusalem. He sees an Ethiopian eunuch who is hungry for understanding driving along in a carriage. He offers to talk, and is invited on board. It’s about not being afraid to talk about our religion, not being afraid to claim God as a friend.

People are hungry for God. All we have to do is get clear – come to understand ourselves, what nourishes us spiritually, what fills our hears with peace and a sense of purpose. All we have to do is find the words that describe our own unique relationships with God. If we do that and if we are not afraid to share what we know in whatever ways are natural for us, we’ll wind up in conversation. And that’s enough.

We don’t have to do it alone, either. We have a whole community of fellow travelers. We can share our understandings and our joy together, pointing the way to the well of abundant water. There are people out there who really need us to be evangelists.

Small Groups Living in Relationship with God

A very satisfying way of interacting with others within a parish is through small faith-sharing groups. These are gatherings of a few people who want to support one another in living a life in relationship with God.

A faith-sharing group can be open or closed. It can meet weekly, monthly, or even just once or twice during a year. A group might focus on a text, a book, a film series or some other kind of content, or it might be organized simply as a support to its members’ spiritual development. Groups sometimes form to experience new forms of worship. They can also explore certain healing or spiritual practices. They can even be open-ended, as our ECM coffee house group was, discussing a different topic each week as members brought their questions.

Regardless of the format, faith-sharing groups generally follow a certain broad structure. They offer time for prayer, time for a “check in” where each member shares highlights and difficulties of the period since the last meeting, time for reflection, time to share a goal for the week ahead, and time for closure. Under this arrangement each member can feel secure but also challenged.

The size of a faith-sharing group, how often and how many times it meets will determine the level of intimacy which is developed. Optimal group size for forming deep connections is between six and eight. Larger groups might be able to coalesce over time, but each person’s opportunity to share each week will be limited. Groups of more than twelve are usually too unwieldy for in-depth communication.

For this reason, someone wanting to start a faith-sharing group only has to gather a few like-minded people. Here are some basic considerations. Number of meetings: As a rule, groups which meet a certain specified number of times are more attractive than groups which are open ended. Time and place of meetings: Members need to know they can choose where, when, and how often to meet. Topic: If the group is forming around the discussion of a book or other content, a broad subject with a significant spiritual component tends to be more inviting.

Small faith-sharing groups benefit the parish as a whole in many ways. They nurture faith and spiritual growth. They encourage individuals to take their own perspectives and understandings seriously. And they empower their members to live into their ministries in the church and in the world.

A small group, led by Fran Milde, centered on the book St. Benedict’s Toolbox is forming to begin in October and run for six weeks. A monthly coffee house group will also begin this month. If you are interested in either of these groups, yearn for an intimate community or have a topic you’ve always wanted to explore with like minded people, let Bonnie or me know, and we’ll help make it happen.

Growing in the LIfe of Faith

We have been looking at what it means to live our Baptismal Covenant, delving into the promises we made and ways we might live into them. This exploration has just scratched the surface of all that is possible as we move through our lives as followers of the Way of Jesus. Each of the promises we have made is a pledge to life-long learning and practice. “Called to Teach and Learn, A Catechetical Guide and Vision for the Episcopal Church” identifies three areas in which we can be intentional in growing in the life of faith into which we have been baptized.

Faith and Theological Reflection. Faith is a habit of the heart, a way of perceiving the world. It encompasses believing in and discerning God's will, trusting and loving a God who loves us unconditionally, and then responding with worship, actions, and commitments. We grow into faith, as into a wide sea, over time and with experience. Theological reflection is “faith seeking understanding”. It is a process of trying to make sense of what we know of the Way of Jesus in the context of today's needs and challenges. We do this naturally, almost instinctively, all the time. For instance, the question of why the world is such a place of suffering when we have a God of love is a theological reflection we have probably all engaged in more than once in the course of our lives. We can, and should, make theological reflection intentional and systematic through study and discussion. This process opens the channels to experience our relationship with God and to grow in understanding. After all, we have a community that can help us, and all kinds of wisdom and resources to draw upon.

Character and Ethical Decision Making. Our character is our sense of identity and how we are disposed to behave. Good character implies qualities like integrity, reliability and consistency. While we are all works in progress and never consistently exercise good character, we can try to shape ourselves to reflect our best values. Ethical choice grows out of this work, informed by faith and theological reflection. The more we take on the challenges of being Christian, the more our actions match our understanding of God and God's kingdom. We live lives that are honest reflections of our relationship with God at our center. Study and discussion can help this process also, giving us people with whom to reflect on life's more difficult dilemmas, and teaching us what to consider as we are making our choices.

Consciousness and Life in the Spirit. Consciousness is the awareness of self. It gives us the ability to be present to ourselves and our needs and also to be present others, to empathize. Finally, it is the basis of our ability to have an interior life of religious experience, the awareness of God's presence. Life in the Spirit is our exposure to God, communication with God, and awareness of God's actions in our lives and the world. Life in the Spirit is built through relationship with God, which happens through spiritual practices. These may be simple and spontaneous or more formal and planned. When we hear others' stories, whether they be those of religious leaders or even of other members of our congregation, we learn ways that might work for us. Our practices become more conscious and intentional.

Consider joining with other members of St. Paul's in study and discussion. Sunday morning Adult Education and the Advent series which will be beginning in a couple of months are good ways to do this. If neither venue works for you, consider what might work. Bonnie or I would love to hear your ideas.

Striving for Justice and Peace

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” -- Baptismal Covenant, BCP pg 305.

Justice, peace and respect of the dignity of every human being depend on understanding. We all look at the world through the lens of our own cultural values and beliefs.

When I was working on the Wind River Indian Reservation, a woman I knew received a huge sum in back child support payments. Rather than spend the money on the essentials of living, she immediately went out and bought her relatives expensive gifts. I was scandalized by this, and said so to an Arapaho friend of mine. She berated me, saying, “Among my people we put the tribe first. Whenever good fortune befalls one of us, we take care of our people. You white people are selfish; you only take care of yourselves and your children.”

My values and hers didn’t coincide. Each of us made erroneous assumptions about the other. These are the kinds of misunderstanding that are often the basis of disrespect and injustice.

As a church community, how do we help each other with this fifth promise of our Baptismal Covenant, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

• We can become more aware of cultural, ethnic and class issues through study and discussion. We can participate in anti-racism training.
• We can challenge our collectively held beliefs, asking ourselves, “How do I know what I know? Is what I believe really true?”
• We can support peace-making efforts around the globe, especially those based in a sensitivity to the beliefs and values of all parties involved.
• We can cry out for justice in solidarity with all those who are experiencing oppression in our own community and in the world.
• We can recognize that we have within our own congregation people with a diversity of perspectives. We can be willing to teach one another about our differences, and to learn.
• We can go out, like our youth group did in July, and make friends with people from different cultures, listening well to them and sharing well also.

We are a community that prays regularly that God’s Kingdom – that radical place where all are welcome and where everyone experiences full dignity, justice and peace – come on earth as it is in heaven. We are Christ’s hands and heart in the world; we have a role in ushering in that Kingdom. Everyone is welcome and equal at the Table of the Lord, a truly multi-cultural feast.

Seeking and Serving Christ in All Persons

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

-- The Baptismal Covenant, BCP, page 305

There are many aspects to this Baptismal vow. As we gain in spiritual understanding we live into it in different ways.

Most basically, loving my neighbor as myself means helping people get the fundamental things that help them thrive: good food, clothing that instills dignity, a warm place to call home, physical safety, adequate medical care and meaningful work. But the less obvious aspect of helping with fundamental needs is continuously examining and being accountable for my way of life. We live in the richest nation in the world, and our consumption of the world’s resources is appalling. As our global awareness grows, we are learning that when we buy stuff, we often create poverty. Our shoes, our clothing, our food, our houses and cars – where was it all manufactured? What animals were hurt, what land was deforested, what water supplies were taxed or tainted, what people labored for a pittance in order that we might have these things? Loving my neighbor means not only directly helping but also living in a way that supports the planet and all peoples.

Everybody has Christ in them, and therefore everybody is extremely valuable. Understanding this goes beyond the somewhat snide realization that “God loves (name) even though I personally can’t stand (him/her).” Instead, since Christ is my teacher, each person is also my teacher, and I owe them great respect.

The Christ in us is the best of us but not an aspect of ourselves we can claim as our own. It belongs to God and is the manifestation of the kingdom of heaven inside us. Through us it brings the Holy Spirit, love and redemption to the world. Seeking it in another and serving it means helping to liberate the inner Christ to do its work. This is a teaching and a spiritual companioning function. As we grow spiritually, we are called to step into being teacher and spiritual friend to others. In the mutual exchange between the Christ in us and the Christ in our neighbor, the Body of Christ becomes healthy and fruitful.

To be the best teacher and/or spiritual companion for others, we need training. First is a dynamic and evolving training in scripture, the history of the church and theology. Second is training in listening skills, the dynamics of racism and cultural differences, ethical boundary keeping, the nature of spiritual gifts and the process of discernment.

It’s a tall order to live into the vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons. But remember we do everything with God’s help. We also have the love and support of our faith community. In prayer and learning and in doing church together, we renew and equip ourselves to do God’s work in the world. May the Christ within each of us be released to serve.

Proclaim the Good News of God in Christ

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? (from the Baptismal Covenant, BCP pg 305)

In many Native American cultures it is common to introduce oneself in relationship to other members of one’s family. My friend Rena would say something like: “I am Rena, Flossy Brown’s daughter, Calvin’s mother, and Harold Redman is my grandfather.” This places her among her people. She belongs to them, and they belong to her. When she is out in the world, she is a representative of this family. They are bound by her actions, and she is bound by theirs. Blood feuds, debts, pledges and changes in status are family matters accrued as the result of the deeds of its members.

Saint Teresa of Avila once, in an inner conversation with Jesus, spoke the truth of her heart distilled through prayer and contemplation and said, “I am Teresa of Jesus.” By this she meant that she felt a profound connection to Christ that gave her a sense of absolute belonging. Imagine her surprise when the response she heard was, “And I am Jesus of Teresa.” In the Church we belong to one another and to Jesus absolutely. And Jesus belongs to us. Our family is the Body of Christ.

According to our catechism, the Good News of God in Christ is that we all have a place in the Kingdom of God. I like to think of the Kingdom as the Dream of God. It includes each one of us in an abundant acceptance. Proclaiming this means living into it and, by word and example, inviting others to do the same. We all have the little mustard seed within us.

We are doing this all the time, whenever we welcome the stranger, support those who have fallen into misfortune, resolve differences we have with others, exist as people of integrity. We do these things as members of our family, as people who belong to Jesus.

Across the course of our lives both our understanding of the Good News and the ways we proclaim it will mature and deepen. We are invited into this process through our core relationship with God in prayer and our relationship with each other in worship and study. The Dream of God is always bigger than human understanding. But no matter how young in faith or how seasoned we are this is the core understanding: we belong to God and one another through God’s abundant love as exemplified by Jesus. We have a place in the Kingdom.

Resist, Repent, and Return

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? – from the Baptismal Covenant

Everybody has a favorite sin – an error we fall into at the drop of a hat, easy as sliding off a slippery log. Mine is thinking about how awful certain other groups of people are and getting “righteously indignant” about people they hurt.

Dividing the world into “good” and “evil” is a way of dichotomizing that gets me in trouble every single time. It leads to “resisting evil” either by fighting the bad guys or by fighting what they believe in, which generally results in me becoming what I hate.

In her Ash Wednesday sermon Bonnie talked about sin as separation – separation from ourselves, from one another, and from God. The word “diabolic” literally means “dividing” or “fragmenting”. Sin has to do with being cut off and isolated. We resist evil by examining our own hearts. We repent and return through prayer, reconciling with one another, and living into who we most deeply are.

Examining our hearts is not as easy as it might at first look appear. We harbor many desires and opinions, quite a few of which are not very well thought out and often conflict with the others. Christian community can help us ferret these out.

In community we are reminded of God’s longing for us. The dream of God is that we be true to ourselves, that we enjoy our relationships with one another, and that we live into our love affair with God. Our church can encourage us. A good sermon, an insight in our studies together or a pithy discussion can help us come home to ourselves in relationship with God and others.

The challenge of our friends can also be very helpful. Someone might say to me, “that doesn’t sound like you,” or “where did you get that idea from?” If I am open enough, I can echo that question and learn from it, exploring, “where did I get that idea from?”

If our church community is healthy – diverse enough – it will also contain people with whom we don’t get along. These good souls might push my buttons, maybe make me feel defensive or uncertain. They are my best guides to repentance and return because, unlike my friends, they do not see me in the glowing light of affection. If I can get beyond my outrage, if I can move past feeling wounded by them, I can often find priceless jewels of insight in what they have to say about and to me.

Most importantly, it is in Christian community that we experience the sacrament of our essential connectedness: Holy Communion. We bring our isolation to the table of Christ and reaffirm that we truly are One Body. This reminder of the most basic truth of our nature nourishes us from our brains to our toes.

Thank you for being my community.

The Apostles' Teaching and Fellowship

Baptismal Covenant: Will you “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” (Acts 2:42)

Once there was a fellowship of vintners who discovered the secret to making a really good red wine. This wine, grown from a certain kind of grape on the slope of a certain hillside, was so good it was said to transport the person drinking it to heaven.

The winemakers were a little community. They knew that the wine was made through collaboration; not one of them would be able to pull it off alone. They knew winemaking was an art and had to be practiced. A really good wine could not come from a recipe in a book. (They did write a book, however, knowing there were some aspects of their process that would be lost if not recorded.) The wine itself was slightly different with each batch and yet still perfect.

People who wanted to learn to make the really good red wine had to apprentice with the winemakers. They learned not so much how to make the wine as what their place was in the community of vintners. The community changed over time. The grapes, as it turned out, could grow anywhere, and so other communities sprang up.

Sometimes when people became masters of the craft they would strike out on their own, thinking they could make the really good red wine all by themselves. Their wine was not very nuanced. Sometimes people would sneak in and copy the book, using it alone to try to make the really good red wine. Their wine was rarely very transporting.

Each time we renew our baptismal covenant, we make the promise, quoted at the beginning of this article, to participate in Christian community. We vow to continue in the apostles’ teaching, to listen and learn together, to partake in Holy Communion, and to pray.

Over time I’ve come to appreciate the importance of this promise. Like the vintners, we cannot make the wine of spiritual understanding alone. The community helps us with its myriad skills and aptitudes. Our comprehension is tempered by the wisdom of others. With our priest, spiritual descendant of the apostles, we listen to the stories of our tradition and work to grasp and apply them. Our community gives us strength and the support to accomplish our ministry, which is shaped and honed through practice.

Central is the sacrament of communion, through which we understand ourselves as the Body of Christ. Christian community includes all comers – it’s one of the few places in our lives where we can learn from and love people who are very different, relying on them to help us to grow. Coming to the table of Christ, we experience again and again the grace of our complete, radical belonging.

More central still is our collective prayer. In prayer we dance with God, invoking, praising, imploring, confessing to and thanking God, the reason that we exist at all, in community and otherwise. Without prayer, who would we be.

Thank you for being my community of winemakers. My prayers go with each one of you in all your ministries.