After Pentecost

What a fantastic Sunday at First Christian Church Scottsdale!

Everyone looked resplendent in red, the sanctuary was beautifully decked out, and balloons were flying!

That's right, balloons.

There are two things that I knew people were going to remember about Pentecost Sunday this year:
1) That we flew helium-filled balloons clear up to the ceiling of the sanctuary!
2) Melissa's delicious homemade, gourmet cupcakes at Fellowship Hour!

Trust me, it takes a lot of pressure off the sermon when you already know that memories will be made elsewhere in the service!

Our Worship Committee was hard at work behind the scenes making sure that those memories were going to be made. I'm forever indebted to them and want to take a moment to thanks Carrie (our chair), Dorothy (our decorating leader), Sandi, Daryl, and Kendra for making everything happen from candles to balloons, to red vestments, and even acolytes!

Oh, and Melissa, thanks for letting me bring home some extra cupcakes. They were just as big a hit at home as they were in the Fellowship Hall!

Newsbrief: Pentecost

When it comes to defining some of the often indefinable words and expressions of our faith I have a favorite resource I turn to.

It is called “Wishful Thinking” by theologian, humorist, and Christian minister Frederick Buechner. With a mixture of whimsy and abiding faith he often spells out the vocabulary of our faith with a clarity and purpose that few others offer.


Plus, the book is also only 126 pages long, which also helps!


For the definition of “Holy Spirit” here is what Buechner writes:

The word spirit has come to mean something pale and shapeless, like an unmade bed. School spirit, the American spirit, the Christmas spirit, the spirit of ’76, the Holy Spirit – each of these points to something you know is supposed to get you to your feet cheering, but which you sometimes can’t rise to…


Like its counterparts in Hebrew and Greek, the Latin word spiritus originally meant breath (as in expire, respiratory, and so on), and breath is what you have when you’re alive and don’t have when you’re dead. Thus spirit = breath = life, and aliveness and power of your life, and to speak of your spirit (or soul) is to speak of the power of life that is in you. When your spirit is unusually strong, the life in you unusually alive, you can breathe it out into other lives, become literally in-spiring…


God also has a spirit – is Spirit, says the Apostle John (4:24). Thus God is the power of the power of life itself, has breathed and continues to breathe himself into his creation. In-spires it.

I hope to see you this Pentecost Sunday (remember to wear something red!) as we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and God’s abiding presence in our lives.


Yours in the journey, Rev. Brian

Whiteboard: Pentecost

This coming Sunday is Pentecost! Come join us as we celebrate the promised gift of the Holy Spirit! 

This Sunday's sermon will build on two scripture readings that are often pitted at odds against each on Pentecost Sunday. 

The first is the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11:1-9. It details the ways in which God mixed up the languages of the world when people decided to build a tower ostensibly to storm the gates of heaven. The typical lesson from this text is that diversity is bad and God muddled up the languages of the world to punish us...but I'm not so certain that it best take on the subject. Particularly because of...

...the Pentecost Story that we find in Acts 2:1-21! Here we find the Disciples of Jesus gathered in one place when the Holy Spirit comes to them in a rush of wind and through tongues of flame. Quite an appeareance! Yet that isn't the most amazing part of the scriptural account. No, the most amazing part is that when the Disciples speak people from all over the world hear them as if their were speaking their own native language. Suddenly the Holy Spirit has brought the blessing of understanding and the gift of diversity and difference is formally and fully made known!

Come join us this Sunday (and don't forget to wear something red!) as we celebrate the Blessing of Understanding, the Gift of Diversity, and the Power of the Holy Spirit. See you there!

peace,

Rev. Brian

Congratulations Coolwater!

This past Sunday saw the Dedication of the church building for Coolwater Christian Church.

It was an amazing event and truly a blessing to be there in Coolwater's own building for the Dedicatory Worship Service.

Rev. David Shirey preached up a storm (and grinned from ear to ear during most of the service!). Their Building Chair Ron Nierman brough words of greeting from all of the Architects, Design Group, City Officials, and Subcontractors who worked so hard to construct such a beautiful church building (and challenged the church to complete the next phase in the building project within five years!). Our Regional Minister Denny Williams led us in prayer. There was beautiful music, much rejoicing, a sumptuous dinner that followed and all the while that space was filled with the hopes and dreams, promises and passions that can only come from our God of love and life.

What a great day. Congratulations Coolwater. We look forward to continuing to journey with you in ministry and bearing witness to the wondrous things that are yet in store for you all in the service of Christ!

For more on Coolwater Christian Church, visit their website at www.CoolwaterChurch.org.

Newsbrief: Joplin (Part 2)

Rev. Brandon Gilvin is the Associate Director for Week of Compassion. As I've mentioned before he is a good friend of mine since seminary and was one of my groom's men at my wedding.

Last week Brandon's calling through Week of Compassion sent him to Joplin, Missouri to provide a pastoral presence to those so deeply impacted by the devastation of the tornado that tore through town and to help coordinate relief efforts.

On Wednesday June 1, 2011 Brandon sent out this message:

It had barely been a week since the tornado hit Joplin, MO. Josh Baird, Director of Disciples Volunteering, and I arrived in Joplin around 10 on Monday morning and found our way to First Christian Church. In the heart of Joplin’s downtown, First Christian was not hit by the tornado, and had generously opened its doors as an emergency refuge immediately following the storm’s passing. Since then, the church’s family life center had been transformed into a center of activity, where donations for the battered but resilient community are collected, sorted, and distributed. We quickly found Fay Blevins, the pastor at First Christian; Jill Cameron Michel, the minister at South Joplin Christian Church; Tyler Whipkey, her student associate; and Michael Weinman, Minister to the Ozark Lakes Area of the Mid-America Region, and gathered together in Fay’s office for a time of prayer, discussion, and brainstorming. It was, as it has been every time I’ve made some sort of pastoral visit following a disaster, humbling.

Jill, Tyler, Fay, and Mike all shared with us the things they had seen over the last week. It was incredible to sit and listen to four pastors, whose words were filled with both worry and wisdom, speak to what it means to minister in a time of such devastation and what a long-term recovery might look like, how to develop local partnerships for responding over the long term, and how we, as Week of Compassion and Disciples Volunteering, could be supportive and help facilitate connections with the wider church and resources for long-term recovery. We spent time with a few church members who, like the pastors, spoke of a deep love for their community as they described the ways they were pitching in—whether that meant searching through debris for loved ones and strangers, or whether that meant organizing the volunteers who showed up with baked goods, bottled water, and bags of clothes to donate.

Then we headed out. The devastation was incredible. “Matchsticks and splinters,” were the words that Josh used to describe the houses shredded by the tornado’s vast path of destruction: a path that worked its way northeast from the southwestern edge of Joplin. Some houses were still standing, and I saw on many of them the haunting spray-painted symbols that I first encountered in areas of New Orleans affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The quick tags left by rescue crews to mark what crew has searched which house and what--or who--they have found tell brief, quick, sometimes painful stories:

“3 Bodies Found”
“2 Animals Safe”
“All Clear.”

As we traveled streets once wooded, now bare, and I saw those—and other markings...

“God Bless Joplin”
“Thank You!”
and a simple
“Rebuild”

...my mind went back to the Shema, perhaps the central prayer in morning and evening prayers in Judaism, recorded in Deuteronomy 6:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Driving around and seeing response teams and volunteers from all over the country, made up of everyone from Mennonites to Muslims, I began to conflate the sacred words of covenant and care found in the Torah and written on one’s doorpost with the words cast across brick and plywood in Joplin, because amidst all that destruction, those symbols and spontaneous outpourings of hope and care seemed prayerful. There was something sacred about that spray paint.

We made our way to South Joplin Christian Church, which stood at the northern limit of the storm’s path. South Joplin had lost a roof and sustained significant damage, but was a flurry of activity as the restoration crew provided by their insurance company gutted rooms, pulled up carpet, and made plans for repair. In a Sunday School room, scrawled on a blackboard for what must have been a lesson on the Psalms just hours before the tornado hit, were the words “O GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD; CALL ON HIS NAME”

An unintended but serendipitous prayer for Joplin. Gratitude and hope amidst tragedy. Resilience marked in spray paint and chalk.

Thanks, indeed, to God.

--Brandon

Last week we made an appeal to the members of FCC Scottsdale to help raise funds for our sister church, First Christian Church Joplin (it is the church where our own Sandi DeFeo grew up), as they serve as a primary response station for their community. I'm proud to say that we raised over $1200 and are sending those funds along with our prayers and well wishes for this community.

Let us continue to keep everyone impacted by this terrible disaster in our thoughts and prayers. Let us lift up those who lost loved ones, lost their homes, lost their possessions, lost their sense of safety and wellbeing. Likewise let us lift up all of those, like FCC Joplin, Week of Compassion, and countless others who are helping to respond to the disaster day by day and week by week.

peace,
Rev. Brian

Whiteboard: The Ascension

This Sunday in worship we'll celebrate Christ's Ascension.

After Christ's earthly ministry, after his healings and teachings, after his miracles, after his death on the cross, after his resurrection from the grave, and after his resurrection appearance to the Disciples and first believers...after all those things Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father in Heaven.

Yet his earthly ministry was not vacated. Instead, it falls squarely on his believers still alive and at work in the world to be the very Body of Christ active and engaged in living out his ministry.

What a responsibility!
What an opportunity!
What a calling!
What a great reason to come to worship!

Come gather with us this Sunday as build our worship service around the text from Acts 1:6-14 and celebrate the power of Christ that is still at work in the world today.

Newsbrief: Tornado Relief

First Christian Church Joplin

Sometimes the national news hits close to home.

Such is the case with the tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri earlier this week devastating a small community in the southern part of that state.

You see, my niece and nephew spend the bulk of their summer vacation in Joplin with their father. As soon as we heard about the tornado my wife and I scrambled to find out if the twins were safe (they were, fortunately this was one of the last weekends they were scheduled to be with their mother, my sister-in-law, in St. Louis).

Within a couple of hours Week of Compassion had sent around an e-mail blast informing everyone of the devastation from the tornado and of their roll in working with churches and relief agencies right there on the ground in Joplin. The message in that e-mail blast was simple: “What can you do to help? Three things: Pray, Pay, and Stay.” That three word slogan means that what folks need most right now are your prayers, your financial contributions to relief agencies  and as strange as it sounds to stay away for the time being. On that last one, it turns out the last thing that Joplin needs right now is teams of unorganized volunteers pouring into the community. The time will come for volunteers, but right now they simply need skilled professionals and organized teams doing the heavy lifting. Week of Compassion has a special fund set-up to benefit the victims of all the tornadoes that have ravaged the US already this year, click here to learn more and to give. So we pray, pay, and stay.

But sometimes the news hits closer to our church home too, and this is one of those cases. You see, our sister church First Christian Church Joplin was largely spared by the storm. They are presently serving as a primary response center in Joplin. FCC Joplin is also the church where our Vice Moderator Sandi DeFeo grew up and was baptized. So we have a connection. Sandi has been in touch with their pastor, Rev. Fay Blevins, and has made arrangements to make financial donations directly to the church for their local relief efforts. It is a unique opportunity for us to directly support one of our sister churches.

So if you feel moved to make a donation then there are two options. You can donate to Week of Compassion and designate your gift for tornado relief

knowing that the funds will go to benefit those throughout the country who have been impacted by storms. Or you can give directly to First Christian Church Joplin knowing that your donation will go straight to one of our sister churches that is reaching out in the midst of the recovery in southern Missouri. We’ll be taking up that special collection for FCC Joplin this coming Sunday. Simply make your checks out to FCC Scottsdale (we’ll be collecting the funds here then dispersing them) and make sure to mark your donation for Fund 1034 “Joplin Tornado Relief”.

Whiteboard: Feed my sheep

We have one of my favorite encounters in all of scripture this week. It is filled with forgiveness and challenge, grace and action. There is so much going on in this Resurrection Encounter that I seem to find something new every single time I read it.

Here is the picture for this week...

The scripture for this Sunday comes from John 21:9-19. In it, Jesus appears once more to the Disciples. Again he shares a meal with him, only this time they recognize him immediately. None of that "unrecognized stranger" business like in the Road to Emmaus this week.

After they share the meal Jesus has a question for Peter. Then he asks it again. Then he asks it again.

What is going on with the repetition? And what does this shepherding language have to do with anything? And where does Peter go from there?

Come join us this coming Sunday at First Christian Church Scottsdale as dive deep into this marvelous text and see what word God has in store for us!

Three Things from Administrative Council

Administrative Council had their regularly scheduled meeting this past Sunday, May 15 after worship. Here are the "Three Things You Should Know" from that meeting:

1) We formally approved Al Beasley, Jessie Jones, and Daryl Marinkovich as our three General Assembly Delegates and named Jeanne Thompson as our fourth delegate pending approval from the Regional Office.
(UPDATE: In the two days since our meeting we have verified that our church is eligible to have a fourth delegate. Congratulations to Jeanne who gets to vote now!)

2) The Church Growth Task Force and the Structure Team are moving ahead and making good progress.

3) Big things are happening with the ways that we reach out to one another and to the world: We are expanding our presence with Global Ministries to support our brothers and sisters throughout the globe AND looking into revamping our In-Reach program to support our own church members in times of need.

On the Whiteboard: May 15, 2011

I just couldn't help myself this week. I had to draw a cartoon sheep

With a sermon title like "Feeling Sheepish" and two familiar scripture readings like these I pretty much had to, right?

Our first scripture reading is probably the most well known passage in the Bible, Psalm 23. Its beautiful promise and wondrous imagery is captured in the opening line, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

The second scripture reading continues on the same theme in John 10:1-18 where Jesus declares for all who will follow him, "I am the good shepherd."

So, uh, I guess I could have put a shepherd up on the Whiteboard this week, but lets be honest, drawing a sheep is a lot more fun...and it easier on the artist to!

See you on Sunday!