“We Learned to Love”: August 13, 1727

The events of August 13, 1727, when at the conclusion of a Holy Communion service in Berthelsdorf the residents of Herrnhut united into the Renewed Brethren’s Church, are traditionally considered the spiritual birthday of the Moravian Church. - Moravian Archives

It was 290 years ago today. The Renewed Moravian Church was empowered through the Holy Spirit working on the refugees from the historic Moravian Church- The Unitas Fratrum. From that moment everything changed and they moved into a different world than they had been living in. They were never able to describe what happened in that service that was so powerful. They only knew that they had "learned to love." They discovered that they had a calling from God. They weren't sure what that would mean, but they were willing to begin the journey.

As a result of that one day, factions dissolved and, in but a few years, they were sending the first Protestant missionaries around the world. They started a rich musical heritage second to none. They had an important impact on the life and faith of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church. They started a 100-year long continuous prayer watch.

The world-wide Moravian Unity is still witnessing to the power of God to use all who follow to do amazing things. We have shown over and over that it does not need to be the large and famous churches that do the great things. It is in faithfulness and commitment that the Holy Spirit works.

Our motto continues to move and direct us:
In essentials, unity;
In non-essentials, liberty;
In all things, love.

Calendar of Saints: Father Damien

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Father Damien (1840-1889)
Priest and Leper
April 15

In the 1800's, the Hawaiian Islands suffered a severe leprosy epidemic, which was dealt with largely by isolating lepers on the island of Molokai. They were simply dumped there and left to fend for themselves. The crews of the boats carrying them there were afraid to land, so they simply came in close and forced the lepers to jump overboard and scramble through the surf as best they could. Ashore, they found no law and no organized society, simply desperate persons waiting for death.

A Belgian missionary priest, Joseph Van Veuster (Damien of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart), born in 1840, came to Hawaii in 1863, and in 1873 was sent at his own request to Molokai to work among the lepers. He organized burial details and funeral services, so that death might have some dignity. He taught the people how to grow crops and feed themselves better. He organized a choir, and got persons to sing who had not sung in years. He gave them medical attention. (Government doctors had been making regular visits, but they were afraid of contagion, and would not come close to the patients. They inspected their sores from a distance and then left medicines on a table and fled. Damien personally washed and anointed and bandaged their sores.) There was already a small chapel on the island. It proved too small, and with the aid of patients he built a larger one, which soon overflowed every Sunday.

Damien contracted leprosy himself in 1885, and continued to work there until his death on 15 April 1889.

-Link

Toward Pentecost (46): Mission

Lent Picture A Day (41): Live

Reflecting on Mission

Last Sunday was Mission Festival at a local church. I went to hear what the speaker- a dynamic young man with the Board of World Mission had to say and to worship in support of the ideal of missions. Mission Festivals have been a significant part of the life of the Moravian Church (and others) for a long time. The Moravians were the first Protestant missionaries, sending the first workers to the West Indies in the early 1730s. They went to share the Gospel with the slaves, not a particularly popular thing among the slave owners. The first missionary even went so far as to proclaim that he would become a slave if he had to in order to share the Gospel with them.

When I became a Christian at age 15 it was through a mission-oriented Baptist congregation. There was a mission training facility a few miles up the road and one of the sons of the congregation was a mission worker through them. Every year or so he would come home on furlough and share his work with the congregation which was giving him financial support. In addition we would regularly get letters from him outlining what he was doing. This was out version of the Mission Festival and always was moving and exciting to me.

So it should come as little surprise to anyone (but me, of course) that when I found a denomination that I felt called to be part of and to be ordained in, the Moravian Church, mission pioneers, was where I settled. I have been part of the church now for over 43 years, forty of those as an ordained pastor. Mission work has, of course, changed and, in reality, expanded to something I find even more exciting than I did back in my high school years. Mission has become far more than the sharing of the words and promise of the Gospel. It is now sharing the heart, life, healing, and soul of the Gospel where it needs to be shared.

This, too, was part of the early Moravian mission work and there are many stories about care and concern beyond simply converting the unbelievers. But it has been the changes in world cultures, technology and the self-understanding of the church that has made the biggest impact, taking the basic understanding of mission into more than it ever was.

One of the ways I understood this was to begin with the people at home and introduce them to mission as something THEY do, something they are engaged in. It becomes, at that point, a combined educational and missional experience. I first learned this through a Lutheran Church in Greenwich Village when I was doing an internship in Bethlehem, PA. The church in New York would bring youth from outside the city into the Village for a weekend of what the city was about. They had a mission to runaways and, in those days of the early 70s that was significant. It was quite an experience. When I moved to my first Moravian congregation, I signed up to take a group. Later we went to another Moravian Church on Staten Island to experience the city and its potential for mission.

You see what I learned at Operation Eyeopener was that when you enter New York City you are simply placing a big magnifying glass over the problems and needs. The same problems and needs are to be found in your local community. Once you can begin to see them, you can begin to minister to them. To me that was an essential and basic understanding of what the Christian Church is to be. Without that, we are nothing but a country club. (I do have a way of exaggerating for emphasis.) A few years later I moved to Wisconsin where a “mission trip” movement was beginning at the church I was called to serve. The day I was installed as pastor, one of the members was in Alaska on a mission trip. The point was not lost.

Three years later I arranged a trip of about 15 youth and adults to travel east from Wisconsin to New York City where the denomination had a food program for the homeless and were about to open housing for older people who had been homeless. We raised the money and traveled by train in what may have been one of the first such mission trips from the Western District. Others began to organize trips for adults to Central America and the West Indies. It took off- and hasn’t stopped.

There was some initial push-back from others, though not usually from the congregation itself. Other pastors would periodically say that we shouldn’t be spending the money that way or that it wasn’t really mission. We were simply doing tourism. While there is some truth in that, it is as much educational as it is mission so that when we got home we were more mission-aware. Adults or youth would invariably comment that they were touched, moved, changed by the experiences. Interestingly some of those clergy who raised concerns would later go on their own mission trips and become convinced of the importance and power of the experience.

As a result of some major work in the Southern Province along with a number of lay people from the Western District the whole mission trip experience expanded in the 90s and 2000s to include a number of different opportunities. Some of us even began to also take youth to places like the West Indies, Jamaica, or Native American reservations. Friendships were made, rebuilding work was done, mission was expanded.

I thought of all those things last Sunday listening to the next generation of mission leadership challenging us to keep our vision. The work of the church – what we call “mission”- is alive and well. It is just as essential as it ever has been. No, it is not always bringing people to Jesus. It is often more like taking Jesus to them.

I am excited for the future of the mission of the church. The “church” is at a time of change and uncertainty. Politics and fundamentalism have combined forces in our world to distort the message of Jesus into something I don’t believe Jesus would recognize. It is not a triumphalist attitude that mission work promotes. It is just the opposite. It is like the first Moravian missionary, willing to become a slave in order to share the Gospel.

For the Beginning of the Christmas Season

"I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."
-Pope Francis

They Are There....

And I Am Not

New York that is. Staten Island. Battery Park. Broadway. Statue of Liberty.

You know the place. The city so nice they named it twice.

Our church's mission team left yesterday for a week in the Big Apple to learn, grow, experience, and share. They will be assisting a local group in a big annual clothing distribution. I have been guiding the development of this trip since last fall. Mission trips are my passion. New York is one of my favorite places to go.

Why?

Because in New York you see all you need to see about the needs of your own community. You just see it through a great big magnifying glass. It's right there in your face, especially if you are from out of town and not become blinded by the familiar of the streets. The awareness raising there is second to none. And it is right here in the USA.

This would have been my sixth or seventh New York mission over the past 40 years. I have gone other places at home and abroad, but this was a new opportunity with a new group. But things didn't work out the way I had planned. As I have written here before things began to go south with my back a couple months ago. I tried to push it off. i tried to convince myself that it was going to be okay. Even when I went to see the surgeon I convinced him (and myself) that the surgery could wait until the end of September. All my travels and plans would be done then.

MY travels. MY plans.

As I have heard around the recovery community more than once:

If you want to make God laugh, tell God YOUR plans.

Then I had a moment of clarity. I can't walk that much without going VERY slowly. Have you ever tried to go slowly in New York? While leading 11 other people? Into subways and through Times Square?

Me neither, and this wasn't a time to start. Then I realized that there were some subtle but not positive changes happening. What if I am in the middle of the trip and the back really goes out? How would that feel? How would that help the mission? So I gritted my teeth and scheduled the surgery for tomorrow.

And stayed home as the crew left yesterday.

I know they don't need me to have a great experience. New York is the experience. Mission and service is the adventure. Not me. They know me. I have done my part. It was time to let go and let God do with them what God has had planned all along.

Having said all that, tomorrow is my surgery date. If all goes as planned- and as it did last time- I should be home by Wednesday afternoon. I probably won't be able to give you a report until Thursday, so I have a couple posts already to go for the next two days, at least. I am feeling good about the plans and grateful that my difficulties aren't getting in the way of the group who had worked so hard to go on this trip.

Talk to you again soon.

Why Not to Go To Church?

Actually, it's a bunch of bad reasons to go to church in the first place. David Fitch at the blog Reclaiming the Mission posted 6 very good reasons not to go to church. Since this is Holy Week leading to some of the largest church attendance of the year, it might be a good time to review them. These reasons, Fitch says, are really ways that keep the church from living in a sense of mission. Here are the first two he mentions:

1. Out of Duty/Obligation
2. Because This is What it Means to Be a Christian.

Maybe a 7th reason this week is:

Because It's Easter.

Actually, the post reminded me of a time a number of years ago when our church was doing one of those periodic all-member phone visits to see if they were still members, interested, etc. One of the phone callers got to talk to an adult member's mother. The member in question, by the way, hadn't been in church the whole time I had been there as pastor at that point. Maybe 8 - 10 years.

"Does ***** still want to be a member of the church?" the caller asked.
"Sure," was the immediate response. "They want to go to heaven."

I think Fitch missed that one, too.

But on the other hand, there is always the hope that no matter what the reason they come, the act of being in church and participating even minimally in that experience may make a difference. We should never underestimate the power of God's Holy Spirit to work miracles. In fact, I remember hearing preacher extraordinaire Fred Craddock talk about Overhearing the Gospel, the title of one of his books. He said that the best way to do evangelism is for the church to simply live it's life and let those who are not yet Christian "overhear" the message.

Hopefully this Sunday that will happen again, no matter what the reason they are in church in the first place. May the Church be ready to do that well.

Neat!

Came across this on Yahoo! News today from the AP. What a really good idea.

Thank You, MLB, and World Vision for having a simple, yet important vision.

Each fall and winter for the last three years, World Vision has sent to the impoverished around the world thousands of team championship caps, jerseys and T-shirts produced before the World Series and Super Bowl and then rendered unusable for marketing in the United States when teams don't win the title.

Don't Serve Them - Meet Them

Speaking of Faith this past week was another remarkable program. As I said on Sunday's short post, I could probably write a week's worth of posts on different quotes and themes from the show. One that hit me the hardest was on "serving" others- or as I had just finished preaching less than an hour before- "mission."

The guest on Speaking of Faith was Yoga expert Seane Corn. She had been talking about her own journey and discovering through Yoga the essential need to reach out to others- to serve. She discovered an organization, Children of the Night, which deals with helping teenage prostitutes. She went and decided to teach them Yoga as a way of helping them and their self-esteem, body-esteem, etc. It was a disaster. Ms. Corn said:

you could just see the darkness on these kids, and they seemed to me in that moment as hopeless. ... I went into my car and I was really emotional and I was just thinking these kids are messed up. They're never going to get better. They're going to go back out into the world, you know, as criminals, and going on and on in my head. It always takes me a while to kind of, you know, where I always think spirit's saying, like, "You done yet? You going to wake up to this yet?" Because I realized that I had just met the part of myself that I had denied, that I called into my experience the child in me that had been, that is, defiant and angry and scared to death and has absolutely zero tools for healing.

That's where she began to describe for me what mission is really all about, what happens so often on short-term mission trips, and the problem with mission as we have almost always described it.

And, honestly, God is hysterical, and I get the joke really, really late always. Because I got exactly God was saying, "It's time. It's time. You can't deny this. If you really want to heal and open your heart to love, then you've got to find the places within you that's disconnected from God. And I'm giving you an opportunity. Go back. And don't serve these girls; meet them. Go and meet you. (Emphasis added.)

I was literally taken up short, that insight was so on-target. So many different thoughts came to mind. One was Jesus saying to his disciples, in essence, you are no longer servants, you are my friends. To serve others can set up hierarchy and position and, in these types of situations, a better-than-them attitude.

Second, if we are open to the Spirit saying "You done yet? You going to wake up to this yet?" we will turn and see ourselves and something about ourselves that needs to be healed. The places we go to work and serve, the mission we seek, is always one that is inward and outward, two-ways: me to you and you to me. Healing is found for our own needs that we didn't even know we had from those we thought were the ones in need. No wonder people always come home from short-term mission trips and say they got more than they gave. They discovered the mutuality of the faith and of love.

It doesn't matter whether we are talking about a faith-based service, a deep felt-need to help others, or some drive to do something. That drive comes from someplace where we may need healing or growth ourselves. That's what Seane Corn taught me in one short but powerful moment.

Under it all was the awareness that when we do mission we are not, repeat, not going as the ones with the answers to give to those who are less fortunate. We are going to meet others with whom we learn to live and work.

If it were Christmas, we would call that Incarnation.

Stop and Wonder

via Achievable Ends and Bene Diction

Brother Bill at Achievable Ends had this to say:

Let me be blunt. When we stand before our Saviour, he isn't going to quiz on the latest and greatest books by Christian authors we've read, (NT Wright or otherwise) - or the Contemporary Christian Music we've listened to to assuage our souls - or even the wondrous edifices we've built in his name. He's going to ask us "when I was hungry, did you feed me, when I was thirsty, did you give me something to drink, when I was alone did you invite me in, when I needed covering did you clothe me, when I was in prison, did you come to me?"

Sunday Questions

In keeping with today's theme- i.e. it's a Sunday- here are some questions that were originally posted on Today at the Mission just about a year ago. Originally there were 50 but I have done some picking and choosing, hence the numbers. If they make you uncomfortable, don't worry, they made me uncomfortable, too.

1. Why don't we give church members keys to the kitchen?
2. Can we throw more parties?

10. What would happen if there was no big building for us all to go to on Sunday morning?
11. Can a coffee shop breakfast with the guys still be church?

14. If I only had 12 people in my congregation, and one of them ends up turning on me, one of them flat out denies he even knows me, and the rest bail out just when I need them most... would my ministry be a success or a failure?

20. If our entire bible consisted only of the four gospels, how would our religion look today?
21. Why don't we stop explaining our faith to atheists? Yes - my faith is completely, totally and absolutely irrational. That would be the 'faith' part. Duh.

28. "We thank you father, that you, father, have blessed us father, that you loved us father, and that, father, you are here with us now father." Why do people pray like that?

31. If a church event is meant to be an 'outreach' to our friends and family, shouldn't we be going to where they are? If not, perhaps we should change the name to 'inreach'.

36. Here's a little game to play. Sit in church. Pick a man or woman - someone you sort of know, but don't know real well. A Christian person. A nice Christian person. Ask yourself, "If they fell off the wagon and ended up downtown, living on the street, sleeping in their own urine and vomit... would I go get them?
37. Would any of us go get them?
38. Or would that be the pastor's job?

41. Why do missionaries always live somewhere else?

43. Rich Christians are blessed by God. Absolutely destitute Christians must live on faith for their every need. Which is better?
44. Which is better when you haven't eaten in three days?
45. Why do all our pictures of Jesus look like us?

48. Why is there a copyright on bibles?
49. When will we stop praying for revival and start living like the revived?

See, I warned you.

Unavoidable Questions

Bill Kinnon at Achievable Ends has now given us a "Missional Guru Test." He is now ready to ask that group of missional experts some questions. They are, in reality, the questions to ask anyone who purports to have some answers.

I confess that I'm really not interested in hearing theories anymore. I want to know how the missonal profundities emanating from the particular guru are applied in their own lives - right now. Not last year, last century or last millenium. But. Right now.

"Where are you plugged into a local expression of a missional community? How does that impact what you are sharing with us?"

Jesus lived what he taught the disciples. We should have no less expectation of those who want to disciple us.

I have to admit that this does cut close to home. I am a believer in the missional approach to the church. I also know that the church will take a long time to get back to that. Even my Moravian Church, built on that missional theology and with it firmly in our roots, has trouble finding a 21st Century incarnation of that theology.

I don't know what to do. Perhaps I am just an old, tired, modern pastor living in a post-modern world with ideas and dreams and visions that don't seem to get anywhere anymore. Maybe we are living in one of those incredibly difficult transition eras where we are percolating many different visions and views and over the next century they will be sifted and sorted into a vision and expression of church that we today could not even begin to imagine.

But the questions Bill asked are on target. Where can one find a "missional community" in the midst of a surplus of "seeker-sensitive" churches, contemporary - vs- traditional worship, fundamentalist, right-wing, left-wing, evangelical, liberal and on and on. How will one know a missional community when one sees it? How does one who is interested go about building such a community from outside the church hierarchy or when one is part of a community that could care less about missional anything?

The questions go on and on. Thanks, Bill, for starting the thoughts going. I wish I knew where to find some answers.

Committing Mission

According to an article from Crosswalk.com's newsletter Tuesday, an Israeli court has said that Messianic Jews (or probably any Jews converted to Christianity) cannot be denied Israeli citizenship. A number of Messianic Jews had been informed that they could not become citizens because they "commit missionary activity."

That reminded me of the old question- If you were hauled into court and charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Of course that begs the question of what evidence there might be available to use?

Do you pray... or do you pray for your enemies?
Do you react to slights... by turning the other cheek?
When robbed do you fight back... or give them your shirt, too?

Then there's that still revolutionary idea of visiting the prisoners and feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger in your midst.

But then, to commit mission? The mind is overwhelmed by the idea. Three counts of committing mission and you go to jail. But then what is mission? Is it the narrow definition of spreading the Gospel to those who have never heard? Or is it deeper, broader, higher than that?

Just let it sink in.

All About Food
A wonderful and mission-challenging book has captured me. Sara Miles has given an unusual and powerful conversion story in Take This Bread. Sara is an unlikely convert to Christianity. For lots of reasons you would not expect someone like her to do so. Let's see- she's a lesbian living in a committed relationship with her daughter. She is liberal. She is feisty. She is challenging. And she was hooked by the bread.

Yes, the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion. Who says there isn't a "real presence" of Jesus at that Table? Who says it isn't an act of grace- in action? Sara was captured against her will- but not against her spirit into a community of Christians who did things differently but effectively. When she got there she found that the Bread is more than bread. It is life. And then it became Jesus' life to the surrounding community in mission. It is a story that will hook you and at the end you will be convinced you smell the aroma of fresh bread reminding you that Jesus has NOT left the room.

Adventures Great and Small
In a conversation with a friend last week the subject of "great adventures with God" came up. I thought that was a really good phrase and I have spent some time pondering it- and its comrades- average adventures and small adventures. What I believe is that all of life is, of course, an adventure when God is involved. What's needed most for that is a sense of awe and openness and being aware. God is always doing small things. God's work is going on around us in so many ways that it is hard to pay attention to them all.

Some of these daily adventure possibilities are small- noticing a fresh breeze, hearing laughter, assisting with tears. Some of them are not daily but relatively frequent. These are the average adventures. These are the opportunities for a special ministry, a new way of looking at an old one, or deciding to make some changes in your life that help you follow Jesus more completely.

But it's the great adventures, though, that catch our attention and lead us into places we would never have thought possible. These are the things that change us, our world,our friends, our churches, our denominations. It doesn't need to look BIG and special, but its long-term impact can be huge. I have been blessed to be par of a number of great adventures with God including work in short-term mission development, senior high church camping and AIDS ministry. These are the things that stick out in my mind, but they are part of the full range of following God.

We call this discipleship. We follow the lead of our God, doing what the Savior wants, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Big or small, it is an adventure, never dull, and always filled with opportunities. But it takes the awareness I've already mentioned, the openness to God. But it also takes commitment. It is that moving from centering on self to a centering on God.

Author Tom Bandy of Easum, and Associates has this to say in a new posting on the EBA website:

With the first breath and your last penny, will it be “mission” or “me”? That is the clincher. If people cannot answer that question in favor of “mission”, then they are simply not faithful by any standard of faith and behavior of the earliest church. Period.
--The Clincher, Tom Bandy