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This ordinary time

Although we haven’t been following the lectionary readings for Sunday worship this summer, it is worth remembering that this is the season of Ordinary Time. This is the space between Pentecost and Advent in which we are neither immediately anticipating Christ’s birth nor death. Easter has happened. Pentecost has happened. And now it is Ordinary time, and life is happening. And life is ordinary. And yet, if we are willing to pay attention, it is permeated by all those things we celebrate and observe in the heightened seasons of the year – birth, death, resurrection, Spirit-gift.

If...

Social realism

There’s a new ministerium of pastors forming in Columbus to meet monthly to think creatively about various ministry realities, organized by a couple ministers with the Episcopal diocese. Love those Episcopalians. Today over lunch we met at the Columbus Museum of Art and were given a tour through the Modern Dialect exhibition, displaying paintings from American artists from the 1920’s to the beginning of World War II. The question that the presenter was asked to help us think about was “How can our faith communities support prophetic voices?”

The presenter spoke of the shift from...

Six Scriptures

We are nearing the end of our Twelve Scriptures summer worship series. After this Sunday, focused on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5, we have only one Sunday remaining. It has been a rich time whose learnings can hopefully keep informing the mission of the congregation long after the series ends.

If you remember, the Twelve Scriptures was one of two parts of the survey we issued in the spring. The other part was called the Six Scriptures in which you were invited to name up to six of the most troubling and difficult passages in the Bible. The idea was that if we are going to hit...

The edge of the inside

I came across a new phrase that I especially like while reading some Richard Rohr: “The edge of the inside.” Rohr, a Franciscan, uses this phrase to talk about his own relationship with the church and religious life, and commends it as a privileged position from which to see and live.

When you’re on the edge of the inside, you’re still inside the institution of the church, still participating in worship and ritual and community life. But you’re on the edge. You have a critical distance from the trappings that religion brings with it and you are aware of the shortcomings and...

Love as hospitality

The church building is full with activity during the evenings this week with Vacation Bible School. The theme, “Give and receive God’s great love,” is a nice continuation of our worship focus for the last three weeks during this portion of the Twelve Scriptures Project. As has been alluded to in worship, love can be an incredibly broad, general, even generic, idea. During VBS love has been talked about specifically as extending hospitality.

The primary symbol of this hospitality is a canvas tent on the platform in the sanctuary. Each evening the tent is a scene of...

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