Reflection Roundup: Topics That Stretch
Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. Here are 10 things worth sharing this week.
—
Christ confesses in his Phil. 2 hymn that every knee that bows brings glory to God the Father.
1. “Resettling Afghan evacuees will be a mammoth job. Churches will be essential,” writes Mark Silk for Religion News Service. In Connecticut, a community organization has been tackling the physical needs of diverse groups of people from a spiritual perspective for a long time. It’s their goal to appeal to a wide variety of perspectives, to be a helping organization in which those being helped can see others like themselves. Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) began as a small Episcopal office called Interfaith Refugee Ministry. When Chris George began as executive director in 2005, he “saw the need to make it a more inclusive enterprise. Currently the refugee camp on Joint Base McGuire Dix Lakehurst, N.J., holds approximately 9,400 Afghan refugees and has a capacity to hold up to 13,000.”
2. Awareness of our context must be a beginning place for all practical theology. The chaplains at Harvard University’s recent decision to appoint an atheist as their chief campus chaplain is one that surely raises questions. Writing “What Harvard’s humanist chaplain shows about atheism in America” for Religion News Service, Wendy Cadge and Penny Edgell offer a perspective that seeks first to understand. We Christians can often be guilty of judging the information we receive in an immediate fashion; many times we miss ways in which it can truly educate us. It helps, as we seek to continually realign with the mission of God in the world, to raise our heads and scan the American religious landscape to see what we might learn. The backlash Harvard has received about this decision indicates the encouraging truth that while, “Americans are becoming more comfortable with alternative forms of spirituality, they are less comfortable with those they see as entirely secular.
3. In “Who is welcome at the communion table?” Peter W. Marty angles truth for the Christian Century. Scripture invites us to commune upon self-examination. Why do we so easily slip toward scrutinizing others’ eligibility? Marty points out the “clubbiness” implied when we use insider/outsider language, definitely something Jesus discouraged. Sacraments are inherently a means by which we as the Church experience the grace of God. Marty poses, “Maybe the grace experienced in the sacrament precedes belief,” which aligns with the way each experience reminds me of my faith pretty well.
4. Last week, the Harding University Bible Lectures convened a panel of boots-on-the-ground ministers that presented two recorded sessions on “The Post-Pandemic Church,” moderated by the Christian Chronicle’s Bobby Ross Jr. In part two, “What Creative Approaches Can Help Spur Kingdom Growth in a Difficult Time?,” these ministers presented creative ideas, gut level confessions, admonition toward getting our Christian lives oriented outside of what happens in the building or on the weekends alone, and moving church off of our anticipated first point of connection. Any listener can find elements of their own story with regard to church in the thoughtful comments of these panelists.
5. Also last week, I had the privilege of hosting alongside Myles Werntz as ACU’s Siburt Institute for Church Ministry and Baptist Studies Center partnered to offer a webinar on “Hunger and Hope: Ministry in Times of Food Crisis.” Our special guests, Eugene Cho of Seattle and Texas native Jeremy Everett, are both ministers who bring a wealth of experience in addressing the issue of hunger on a local level and that of national policy-making. So the solutions they pose, while correlated with the distinct problems causing hunger, are both accessible and convicting for individuals and churches alike.
6. Carey Nieuwhof’s “4 Steps to Amplify Community Engagement” put additional meat on what our friends at Harding offered in their panel presentation last week. Nieuwhof poses the question, “If your church closed her doors this week, would the community notice?” and then goes on to emphasize that “we must serve people to Jesus.” We must ask ourselves where our main energies are focused – inwardly toward our weekly gatherings or outwardly toward the needs perceived through our engagement with the community outside our walls?
7. As someone who loves a good podcast, this recommendation surprises even me, but I think he has a point. Check out Brad East’s blog article “Quit podcasts.” If our goal is to tamp down both the external and internal noise, we’ve got to quit giving ourselves an out and remember the prayerful silences within which we can routinely operate.
8. Thom Rainer writes “12 Traits of Churches Doing Well During the Pandemic” with the note that thriving congregations are doing all of them. There is still time to utilize the crisis to ask needed questions and take certain aspects of church life down to the studs. The pandemic has seemingly already done this in many cases. Rainer offers his observations of what initiatives are in the target’s center and at the growing edge of reimagining.
9. In “Telling stories for identity-forming discipleship” from Fuller Youth Institute, Aaron D. Yenney encourages something that many might be tempted to shy away from. Sharing faith stories from perspectives outside one’s own or exploring the religious worldviews of others actually solidifies the identities of our youth, both religious and otherwise. Yenney encourages, “Let’s join the young people we serve in discipleship as learners. Let’s have surprising dialogues. We need not construct identity for them; just give them as many tools as possible.”
10. In a university discipleship group this fall, we’re asking one another to practice the solitary disciplines. It’s come to our attention that some of us (ahem) have drifted away from a journaling practice. Being around freshmen this semester has reminded me, in living color, how important it is to pay attention to the transitions of our lives as they always circle back around in one fashion or another, and journaling can be helpful in recording reflections and noting the feelings associated with them. A very good friend gifted me Emily P. Freeman’s The Next Right Thing Guided Journal, which has come out of hiding of late to help with some decision-making in my life. Freeman, in a recent Next Right Thing podcast episode, unpacks her intent behind the layout of the journal and disarms any fears regarding the rigidity of entering such a practice. Needless to say, I highly recommend.
