DisciplesWorld - November/December

We received the new issue of DisciplesWorld this week. The cover story is a feature on John the Baptist, but the remaining articles cover a hodgepodge of topics, including a couple of reflections on the General Assembly.

The article on John the Baptist is excellent -- you will probably learn many things from it, including a bit about the Mandaeans who revere John as God's greatest prophet. Other features explore an education ministry for Palestinians and a Missouri church's summer outreach project to provide sack lunches for kids in a community where 60% of students in public schools qualify for reduced-price or free school lunches. There's also an interesting piece on the benefits of funerals for those mourning the death of a loved one.

There are multiple articles that I would describe as personal essays. Unlike recent issues of DisciplesWorld, I found them to be of a real "hit or miss" quality. One strong piece considers the nature of leadership, paying particular attention to a young woman who founded a web-based company that allows people to make micro-loans around the world. There's also a couple of interesting pieces about letting go of control -- one by a woman reflecting on dealing with significant medical problems, one by a minister about attending church between pastorates. I found the other essays to be more disappointing, particularly one lamenting how the authors found General Assembly to be unfriendly to religious pluralism. Bashing a widely held Christian theology of atonement in the name of reconciliation among faiths is an odd approach to religious dialogue and tolerance.

As a matter of local interest, the poem on the inside back cover is by Maggie Sebastian, pastor of First Christian in Wheeling, whom some may know.

Soles 4 Souls

Our Red Fireballs membership team is encouraging members of the church to donate new and used shoes to the Soles 4 Souls drive being led by Jay Carpenter, Vice President of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) chapter at Mt. Union College.

Soles 4 Souls is a five-year-old organization, created after the tragic 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia, that collects shoes to distribute to those in need, particularly after natural disasters.

Here is a video promoting the effort:

We will be collecting shoes and monetary donations to support the Mt. Union "Raider Relief" effort through November 15.

Coming Up Sunday, October 18

Our celebration of the "Month of the Ministry" continues this week as we consider the ministry of outreach. It is essential for faithful Christians to not only develop their personal relationships with God and with each other; they also need to reach out with Christian love and charity to meet the needs of the wider world.

Jesus did this throughout his ministry. Not only did he help people build better relationships with God, he also quietly reached out and helped those in need around him. If they had questions, he would answer them. If they were sick, he healed them. If they were hungry, he multiplied the loaves and the fishes. And then he suggested that his disciples were to do likewise.

"When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was naked you clothed me," says the Lord. "When did I do that," the disciple asks. "As much as you have done to those in need, you have done to me."

We will also celebrate our outreach ministries, in the Fairmont community and in the wider world.

Faith and Film, "Amazing Grace"

On Friday, our "Faith and Film" series will continue with the 2006 film "Amazing Grace," which retells the story of how slavery was abolished in the British empire in the early 1800s. Here is the trailer:

The film starts at 7:00. It should offer us an opportunity to consider how our faith can impact the larger society for the better.

Thinking about Communion

This morning I came across an essay reflecting on celebrating Communion on World Communion Sunday. It is written by a United Methodist minister, who obviously celebrates the Lord's Supper once a month. It is interesting, I think, for us to see how others view communion -- especially the logistics of communion -- when they do not gather at the Lord's Table every week.

Read the essay here.

Perhaps this is one of the blessings of our faith tradition. By celebrating Communion every worship, and by involving the deacons and elders so fully, we have made the sacrament a central part of our faith practice. In some ways, we have incarnated Communion, making it a part of who we are. I imagine we don't think about it as messy or neat, well-ordered or not -- it's simply who we are and what we do.

Successful Church Innovation

Earlier this evening, I saw the beginning of the Blue Angel's meeting to participate in our Strategic Ministry Planning process. I was thrilled with the turnout, and I am confident that many good ideas were discussed. And I am sure that the Green and Red teams meetings will be good when they are held in the next few days.

This evening, I came across an article about innovation in another congregation's children's ministry. While the beginning of the article is interesting, I was struck by the six bullet points at the end of the article, which seem to me to be "spot on" in describing what a successful progress in ministry entails.

As our planning process continues, as we strive to determine where we will concentrate our efforts in the years ahead and then as we work to make those dreams reality, I hope we keep these six bullet points in mind. Pay attention to what's important. Watch and learn. Be patient. Experiment. Be willing to make mistakes. Celebrate progress together.

The Words on the Bibilical Page

I really enjoyed Tuesday's class session of "Introduction to the New Testament." I thought that everyone was engaged with the material, which is a great thing. I was happy to see so many people and to have so much discussion.

Reading this morning, I've come across a couple of articles that comment about something that I've spent some time explaining in the class -- how complex the process of creating an English translation of the Bible is. There's two different phases of complexity -- first, the process of determining what the Biblical texts originally said in their original language, which is a process of careful reconstruction; second, the process of translation.

In the past few decades, there have been strong disagreements over English translations, particularly regarding gender usages in the Bible. Most often, conservative translators say, God is described as "he" in the Greek of the New Testament -- as opposed, I guess to "she." More accurately, God is represented by a 3rd person, masculine, singular pronoun; the masculinity of that pronoun can refer either to God's masculinity -- "he" -- or that the word for God, deos, is a masculine word in the Greek (as opposed to feminine or neuter). There's also controversy rooted in the way the plural is used in Greek. A plural masculine of believers, say "brothers" (adelphoi), can mean either a group of males or a mixed group of males and females. The technical translation of "brothers" is correct, but it omits the recognition that the plural is really gender inclusive. This is particularly problematic when using what become job titles in the church -- were all of the church leaders in the New Testament males?

Anyway, the impact of the translations on practice and theology are immense. So translations are fought over intensely. Here is a brief essay on some of the battles over translation, produced by the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. And here is an article about the conservative reaction -- I think to the current process of creating an updated version of the New International Version (NIV) -- to translate the Bible conservatively (whatever that might mean).

The issue/controversy over translation will never go away. It's something that people of faith will have to struggle with until the end of days. But it's interesting to see how the debate ebbs and flows. And it's an interesting "newsy" thing touching on the "Introduction to the New Testament" class.

Seeds of Faith on Wednesday

The first "Seeds of Faith" of the fall will be on Wednesday evening, October 7, from 6:00-8:00. There will be dinner (pizza this month), a brief prayer service, and then a lesson. This year's lessons focus on some of the different Christian denominations. We will begin with our own denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

"Seeds of Faith" meets monthly on the 1st Wednesday of the month.

Introduction to the New Testament class, Tuesday night

The Introduction to the New Testament class will meet on Tuesday evening at 7:00. This session will be the first of three on Paul and his letters. After discussing a little about Paul's biography, we will briefly look at letter writing in the ancient world. Then we will focus on 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians.

It would be helpful to read the scripture lessons before the class.

West Virginia Regional Assembly 2010

Details are coming out about next year's Regional Assembly, which will be at First Christian Church in Weirton. More information is available at the Region's NewsWire here. I hope a few of us will make the trip, at least for part of the time.

2009 Reconciliation Special Offering

This Sunday, we will collect the fourth special offering that supports a broader ministry of the church, the Reconciliation Offering. This offering sponsors the Reconciliation Ministry of the church, which seeks to address the social divisions -- particularly race and nationality -- that plague the church.

Earlier this week, the regional office announced that the Northeastern Inter-Regional Fellowship (of which the WV region is a part, along with other regions of the Northeast and Canada) has received a grant from Reconciliation Ministry to sponsor a week-long seminar for high school students next summer. Other information about the offering is available here.

Coming Up Sunday, October 4

We will begin our celebration of "The Month of the Ministry" by celebrating the ministry of worship at Central Christian. We will recognize and thank those who have led us in worship over the past year.

We will celebrate World Communion Sunday along with countless other churches around the world. As much as our theology and practices, as well as geography, separate the members of the church universal, we are still called to be one in Christ, members of one body with Christ as the head. This day we covenant with other churches to celebrate communion as a reminder of our hope, and God's desire, that we will all one day truly be one in Christ.

And as mentioned earlier this week, we will remember one of our founding theologians, Thomas Campbell, who sought a way to find unity among Christians divided. Jesus famously prayed for his followers in John 17 that "they all might become one." Campbell wondered if our greatest sin as Christians might be the innumerable obstacles we have put in the way of that goal.

The sermon is entitled "One," and it will talk about all of these things, emphasizing one church, one Christ, one God. The scripture is taken from Isaiah 57 (one of the passages Campbell cited in his "Declaration and Address"). The central focus will be this: What one thing is the point of worship?

Central Christian on Ch. 19

The October schedule for Fairmont Public Access Ch. 19 includes a 13-minute piece on the Habitat for Humanity project in Mannington that several of us have been volunteering on occasionally. The program includes footage and interviews shot one day while we were volunteering.

The program will be shown at 12:00 Midnight and 12:00 Noon each day in October.

Thomas Campbell's Vision

This weekend, we will celebrate several things:

• The first Sunday of October, the Month of the Ministry
• World Communion Sunday, an ecumenical effort for all churches, regardless of how often they celebrate communion, to gather at the Lord's Table this day
• The 200th anniversary of Thomas Campbell's "Declaration and Address," a founding document of the movement that became the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Perhaps the least known of these is Campbell's "Declaration and Address," published near the end of 1809. This document, intended to form a non-sectarian Christian Association of Washington, PA, was an attempt to reform some of the excesses of the denominational churches, particularly their refusal to recognize each other's ministry as legitimate.

You can read Campbell's "Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington" (PA) here.

Campbell was not a disinterested theologian. He was stripped of his standing as a Presbyterian minister because he refused to follow the instructions of his presbytery regarding who could and could not receive communion. Campbell believed that the presbytery's restrictions around the Lord's Supper were wrong, and could not be justified by the description of the sacrament in the New Testament.

As he worked through this, he came to believe that all denominations suffered from the same basic flaw -- they divided the church of Jesus Christ. Campbell believed that Jesus' prayer in John 17, that all his followers might be one, meant that the division among the church was not a divine wish, but a human creation.

The solution of this, which Campbell lays out in the "Declaration and Address," is to move away from denominationalism. Campbell believed that geographic Christian Associations, founded on the Christian practices of the early church described in the New Testament, offered a way toward the unity of believers.

Ultimately, Campbell's efforts were pretty unsuccessful. The Christian Association of Washington lasted only a few years. The movement to end denominations eventually just added to the number of Christian denominations.

On the other hand, some of the key elements remain and shape Christianity. The restrictions surrounding the communion table have been reduced over the past 200 years. And churches work together in ecumenical organizations, from local ministerial associations (like the Greater Fairmont Council of Churches) to larger organizations (the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches) to mission efforts (like Church World Service).

So we will celebrate Campbell's legacy this weekend. Some of us will travel to Bethany to visit the home, college, and town that Thomas Campbell's son Alexander built to further develop and teach this Restorationist theology. It should be a good weekend.