Drink Deep from the Well of Learning

Back to school time – that’s September. And it is true for us here at the church, as we resume Sunday School and all our many Christian Education offerings. I always look forward to teaching my Bible Study classes, as well as Confirmation Class. And this year I’ve changed my schedule so I can teach Adult Education classes on Sunday mornings.

I’ll begin with a four-week program looking at the Future of Faith. We’ll look at changes in faith practices and religion that are having a pervasive effect on how Christians of all denominations worship and follow Jesus Christ.

We’ll use the two books our Elders read this year as part of Session’s planning and study work with the Rev. Ed White from the Alban Institute: Diana Butler Bass’s book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, and David Kinnaman’s study of how young people are looking at faith, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith.

I’ll continue to teach Wednesday morning Bible Study, while Melissa Kirkpatrick will take on leadership of the Thursday night Bible Study group so that I have time for the Sunday morning classes. If you’ve never come to a Bible Study class before, come join us – you might be surprised by what you learn!

I’ll teach our Confirmation Class again this year, partnered with Mary Langley. We’ve changed the meeting time to Sunday afternoons after worship. The small size of our 9^th grade class, with just 2 students, led us to add the two 8^th graders to the class, and, as a result, we decided to change the format and schedule. 

The word disciple comes from a root that means “to learn”. All disciples are learners – life-long learners. I am a learner, and so is every disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope. His solution? “Drink deep” in learning that you might grow in knowledge and wisdom. Come find your place as a disciple in our learning community this fall!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

Living in Skyboxes?

“U.S. inequality is at its highest point for nearly a century. Those at the top – no matter how you slice it – are enjoying a larger share of the national pie; the number below the poverty level is growing. The gap between those with the median income and those at the top is growing, too. …We are paying a high price for inequality: it contributes to social, economic and political instability, and to lower growth.”

These are the words of Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz writing in the prestigious Financial Times. As a diverse congregation, we may have different political reactions to his statement, but as Christians we should all be equally troubled by the growing inequality in our society.

Have we forgotten what God teaches us about our responsibilities to the poor, the hungry, and the homeless? Has our obsession with the marketplace, celebrity, and wealth caused us to forget that it will be the humble who will inherit the earth, not the rich and famous?

The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles tells us how the earliest followers of Christ lived: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:45) We may not be called to this same communal life, but we are called to assure that those who need food, shelter, clothing, or health care never go without, especially when there are those who have more than enough. John the Baptizer put it very simply, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” (Luke 3:11)

Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard University, asks in his most recent book, “What Money Can’t Buy” whether we are creating a “skybox” society, where we each live in our exclusive, protected skyboxes, where we need not be concerned with or for others. As long as we have what we need for a comfortable life in our skybox, we can live detached from even thinking about those out of sight. He expresses his concern that we have let the marketplace triumph and push out communal concerns in favor of letting our dollars decide how our community lives and who are the haves and have-nots.

Paul echoes James’s warning to the rich with his words, “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” (1 Timothy 6:9). We cannot forget that even as we are a community of faith, we live our faith in community and that means we have responsibilities for one another, friend and stranger alike.

We are called by Jesus to be to be Kingdom builders, not empire builders. Those who have had material success are called to a higher level of responsibility within the community: they are “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share.” (1 Timothy 6:18) For as our Lord Jesus has taught us, “from everyone to whom much as been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

The Pendulum Swings Back

The pendulum is swinging back, as pendulums inevitably do. For the past thirty years we have seen a swing in faith practices to the megachurches, mostly evangelical congregations independent of denominations. But the past few years have seen a turn away from this trend. Those leaving are disillusioned with how Christianity is practiced, seeing it as too political, too consumed with money, too hypocritical, not focused on helping the gathered grow in faith and the Spirit.

Many have turned away from church entirely, while others continue to seek and search. As Diana Butler Bass observes in her book Christianity After Religion, “All sorts of people – even mature, faithful Christians – are finding conventional religion increasingly less satisfying, are attending church less regularly, and are longing for new expressions of spiritual community.”

This growing group of new seekers are calling themselves, “Spiritual But Not Religious.” They see religion as hidebound, stuck in the past, more concerned with rules and institutions than people or even Jesus. SBNRs don’t want to turn away from faith, they want to find new ways to “do church.” They want to worship and serve in a community that nurtures and nourishes their faith. As Butler Bass puts it, “to say that one is ‘spiritual but not religious’ is often a way of saying, ‘I am dissatisfied with the way things are, and I want to find a new way of connecting with God, my neighbor, and my own life.’” The critical questions have become: How do I grow in faith? How do I follow Christ faithfully? and How do I live my faith?

These are the trends at work around us and they will impact us as a church. It is why our Session has been working with the Rev. Dr. Ed White this year so we can plan for the future amidst a rapidly changing world all around us. Butler Bass teaches us that Church is no longer membership in an institution, but a journey toward the possibility of a relationship with people, a community, a tradition, and of course God in Jesus Christ. We need to be sure we are focused on relationships: building them, nurturing them, and nourishing them.

I have been part of the conversations taking place within the Session, of course. My Wednesday Bible Study group has also been part of this conversation as we have looked at the future of faith, church, and religion. I am hoping to open the conversation further in the Fall by leading a series of Adult Education classes on Sunday morning. Come be part of the conversation as we discern where God is calling us and where the Spirit is leading us – into a future which will assuredly be marked by change!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

Artistic Devotion

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is enormous. It is easily the size of two Wal-Marts, stretching four blocks on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, backing onto Central Park. The collection housed in its endless galleries is extraordinary – paintings, sculpture, jewelry, tapestries, media of all kinds, works of art spanning thousands of years from the ancient to the contemporary.

I immersed myself in this extraordinary collection for three days during my recent Study Leave. I had planned my trip to focus on art with, not surprisingly, a religious theme: devotional artwork, art created to tell stories from the Bible, decorate churches, or simply to glorify God.

It is hard for us to imagine a world in which most people did not know how to read, only the clergy had access to the Bible, and books were exceedingly rare and precious, composed and created entirely by hand. It was this world that spawned many magnificent works of art.

Paintings of Jesus abound, telling of his birth, his ministry, his betrayal, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Artists painted on boards and canvas, created works on tapestries, and sculpture in marble, wood, and other stone. Artisans worked with precious metals to create altarpieces, reliquaries, and other pieces used in worship.

The galleries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art can overwhelm with their size and their scope, but my focus on this trip was limited to a specific time period and specific art. Still, I did walk through galleries with paintings by familiar names: Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others. They too, though, often found inspiration in stories from the Bible. 

I also visited the Morgan Museum, which has one of the world’s finest collections of Reformation-era Bibles, as well as Bibles created even before the invention of the printing press in 1450. Did you know, by the way, that we have a Gutenberg Bible right in our own backyard, at the Library of Congress, on display in the main hall?

I stumbled upon an interesting exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan, which featured artwork from the earliest years of Christianity. It was fascinating to see the evolution of the image of the cross from a fiercesome executioner’s tool to a devotional totem carved into tombstones or worn as jewelry.

Even as we look to the end of another school year and celebrate with our newest group of excited graduates, my time in New York was a wonderful reminder that our learning never ends. And my exploration through the many different galleries also reminded me that there is no limit on the ways in which we can express our devotion and our faith in the One who created beauty – and called it good, very good!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

What's on TV?

Walk into Room 5 and the first thing you are likely to notice is the flat-screen television. We have similar installations in the Youth Room and the Middle School classroom. They’ve become integral, even essential, to our teaching, our learning, and how we share information.  

I use the installation in Room 5 almost every week. My two Bible Study groups have watched DVD presentations ranging from biographies of Martin Luther and the apostles Peter and Paul, to Oxford Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch’s superb series, “Three Thousand Years of Christian History.”

In addition to learning from DVDs, I have created numerous curriculum presentations on my computer, including sessions on Worship, Forgiveness, Prayer, The Book of Revelation, and The Reformation among others. With the combination of television screen, computer, and resources available on the Internet, I can create compelling materials and curricula tailored to each class’s interest.

Both the High School Sunday School class and the High School Youth Group use the television and DVD player in the Youth Room. It is a helpful teaching tool, especially for our young folks who do most of their learning in school using monitors and screens. The installation has even encouraged the Youth Group to host a monthly “Friday Night Movie Night”, to provide our young folks with a safe place to gather to watch a film, have some popcorn and enjoy a relaxing evening.

The installation in the Middle School room is used by both the Middle School class and the Middle School Youth Group. It’s also been used by our Early Learning Center, and it is used from time to time by the support group Families Anonymous to view DVDs that help them cope with family members struggling with alcohol or drug addiction.

All three installations have proven themselves to be good investments for teaching and for learning. And, the extra blessing in all this is that all three installations were donated to the church: televisions, DVD players, and even the mounting hardware. Studies have shown we retain far more information when we combine the visual with words, and certainly the generation coming up is doing almost all of their learning on screens. We’ll continue to find new and better ways to teach and learn using sight and sound, as well as words.

We still learn by reading, of course, and the members of our Session are busy reading two books as part of our planning process to help us think about the future. One group of our Elders is reading, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening by Diana Butler Bass, and another group is reading You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith by David Kinnaman. Ed White recommended both books to us as resources to help us think about the many ways churches of all denominations are adapting to change. If you are interested in reading either of these books and participating in the conversation, let me know and we’ll get a copy to you.  

We need no technology to help us celebrate the promise of hope, rebirth, and new life that is ours in Easter.  Our Lord’s resurrection reminds us that the Living Christ leads us here and now into the future, a place of endless new beginnings. Come follow our Lord into the future not just on Easter, but every day, singing “Alleluia!”

He is Risen!

Pastor Skip

What Shall I Give Up?

What is it to be: Coffee? Chocolate? Ice Cream? French Fries? With Lent comes that feeling that wells up within us that we should give something up for the 40 days. We are not sure why we are to give up something, but surely somewhere in the Bible, or perhaps in our Book of Confessions, there is some mandate sounding like a Commandment: Thou shalt give up something during Lent. 

The idea has its foundation in Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness following his baptism. Matthew tells us that Jesus “fasted forty days and forty nights”, and from that the spiritual discipline of fasting became an established Lenten devotional practice 

Over the centuries we’ve taken what can be a very powerful spiritual practice and watered it down into giving up a favorite food for six weeks. The idea behind any spiritual practice is to help us grow in holiness, to help us grow closer to God. Giving up the occasional bowl of ice cream or a slice of pizza is not likely to help you grow spiritually.

Even before Jesus spent his time in the wilderness, God condemned the spiritually empty practices his children were claiming they were doing to show their faithfulness. When God took no notice of their rituals, they lifted up their voices in protest to God, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

But God’s response through the prophet Isaiah was blistering “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,… Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight…Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

Then God tells his children what to do: give up sin. Look deep within yourselves and see where you have strayed from God’s commands and teachings. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with hungry…to satisfy the needs of the afflicted.” 

“The purpose of Lent is to arouse – arouse the sense of sin”, writes Edna Hong. “The purpose of Lent is to arouse the humble contrition for the guilt of sin that makes forgiveness possible. To arouse the sense of gratitude for the forgiveness of sins.” The purpose of Lent is to awaken us to where we have turned away from God. Lent should begin with a downward journey into yourself, so that you can then find your way up, born anew in Christ, dying to the old ways, the old life. 

If you want to give up something for Lent, here are some suggestions: give up Pride, Self-righteousness, Anger, Greed, Envy, or Self-indulgence. Give up your excuses for why you don’t pray more often. Give up your excuses for why you are not doing more to nurture and grow your faith. 

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness of the desert to grow in God and let God grow in him. That’s the goal of Lent. Give up those things that impede your growth, that don’t nurture your faith. Take on new practices and new disciplines that will help you grow in wisdom, obedience, and faith. Do these things, and you can still have that bowl of ice cream.

Grace & peace

Pastor Skip

Looking to the Future

January always seems to be a month of getting ready as we get organized for the new year. Elders and Deacons who have completed their terms of service rotate off their respective Boards and Teams, and newly ordained and installed Elders and Deacons begin their terms and find their way to the various Ministry Teams they will serve. Schedules and calendars are prepared and then we get to work.

Our Elders and Deacons gathered on Saturday January 21 for their annual Officers’ Retreat and to begin the process of planning. This year we want to look beyond the current year, to plan for the next few years, even the next five years. With change happening so quickly all around us, it can be difficult to plan for the future, but we need to think ahead and try to envision what we’ll look like in five years as we celebrate our 150^th anniversary, and from there determine what needs changing, what needs work so we can celebrate our sesquicentennial with confidence as well as joy.

We met at La Capilla, the restaurant that is housed in our old church building in Old Town Manassas. It proved to be a very fitting place for us to begin our work of looking ahead by looking to the past, to think and reflect upon our long and proud history. We stand on the shoulders of so many saints who worked so faithfully on behalf of God and our church over the past 145 years.  

The Rev. Dr. Ed White, a consultant with the Alban Institute (www.Alban.org), led the Retreat and will be working with us throughout the year to help us with our planning. Ed has a long history with us and knows us very well – he was present at the dedication of our current building when he served as Executive Presbyter of the National Capital Presbytery. Ed is looking forward to helping us reflect, discern and plan for an exciting future.

In the more immediate future we’ll begin Lent with our traditional Ash Wednesday service on February 22. A soup supper at 6:30 will precede the 7:30 service, a worship service that focuses on repentance and forgiveness. The text that guides us is God’s word to us spoken through the prophet Joel: “Return to me with all your heart, says the Lord; rend your hearts and not your clothing”.

We’ll build on the theme of repentance and forgiveness with a five-part Lenten series on Thursday evenings beginning March 1. We’ll gather for supper at 6:30 and then at 7:30 spend 90 minutes each Thursday throughout March exploring what it means to repent, why God wants us to come before him with penitent hearts, and why we find it difficult both to forgive and be forgiven. Mark your calendars and plan to participate.

Lent is a time of renewal, a time to offer forgiveness, a time to seek forgiveness. Lent, even as it falls in the midst of winter, brings with it the hope of spring and the promise of rebirth and renewal – a promise we have each day in Jesus Christ.

Grace & Peace

Pastor Skip