Sometimes we’re unsure of how to end things. As this year winds to a close, here are the three essential practices to help us end the year well: Reflection, Contentment, Anticipation.
End-Of-Year Giving
As the year winds to a close, we are all being bombarded with solicitations for End-of-Year Giving from non-profits, schools, ministries, and other organizations. In the midst of our collective request-fatigue, I would like to offer us a few fresh things to consider regarding financial giving to the ministry of our parish.
Three Important Announcements!
Advent Is (Not) About Getting Ready For Christmas
Advent is not only a backwards look to the first coming of Christ, it is a forward look towards the second coming of our Lord to judge and renew all things. This means that the discipleship purpose of Advent is not to turn us backwards in reflection and nostalgia, but rather to lift our gaze to the horizon and turn our attention to the future with fearful anticipation - calling us to wake up, to be attentive, to keep watch for Christ the King.
Parish Fall Fling
What Does Baptism Do To Us?
On Sunday October 31, All Saints Sunday, we will celebrate the sacrament of baptism and joyfully welcome new people into the resurrection family of Jesus. These are always some of my very favorite days of the year. Whether we are baptizing an adult convert, a teenage or college student professing faith for the first time, or a young child born into a Christian family - it is a transcendent joy to witness a soul united with Christ through water.
Men's Chili Cook-off!
One of the things I appreciate most about our fellowship together is our ability to both laugh with each other and also lean into the serious things of life. These are both good for the soul! We need to be both lighthearted and gravely serious.
I’d like to ask you to mark off Saturday evening, Oct. 2nd 6:00-8:00pm so that we can enjoy both of these together. Please RSVP here.
If You Want To Thrive, Part Two: Immersed in a Deluge of Grace
Last week I wrote about how essential it is for us to be consistent in our presence to the Lord and to each other. Today, I’d like to balance out the equation. Actually, balance isn’t quite the right word, is it? We don’t need a little bit of effort and a little bit of grace in order to thrive, we need 100% of both.
If You Want To Thrive, Form New Habits Through Consistent Presence
The 'When, Why, What & How' of Redeemer Small Groups
Re: The Delta Variant—Forward with Courage and Compassion
INVITATION to a CONVERSATION on Sunday, July 18th
This coming Sunday, July 18th, I’d like to invite you to attend a brief conversation about a decision our parish leadership needs to make in the coming months. If you are interested, we will gather in the upstairs library of the church building for 30 minutes in between the services (10:20-10:50am).
Exciting News! Lifting of Social Distancing & Capacity Restrictions
As of today, Governor Northam has lifted COVID social distancing and capacity restrictions. Therefore, we are no longer asking folks to register for worship services in advance and we will be removing the tape for designated seating from the sanctuary before the services this Sunday.
Struggle: Opportunity Knocking
Struggle. Who has escaped it over the last twelve months? While I hope each of us can name some benefits and bright spots through this season, we have all undoubtedly weathered some amount of confusion, fear, discord, and loss. Our Struggle and Hope series has explored our paradoxical relationship to struggle. We resist it, yet we must reckon with it, because struggle always invites us to name something true about our reality, our need, and our hope.
Struggle: An Invitation to Spiritual Care
Have you ever felt God speaking directly into your life through a seemingly random verse? Have you ever stumbled into a passage that brought you to tears?
I had that experience a few weeks ago when I turned to this Psalm during a morning reading. You might remember from my previous post, that early mornings are a regular occurrence in our household and not for the sole purpose of reading the Bible.
Redeemer Kids Resurrection Art Project
As we are moving through the season of Lent together, our eyes are on Jesus’ last days on earth and his coming death and suffering. It is a very serious season to walk through with our children as we all fast and contemplate our mortality together as a church family. But as we know, this makes the coming Easter celebration all the more glorious and anticipated, and our children can feel that excitement build even as we mourn and fast in the coming weeks!
An Invitation to Care: What Tells Us We Need Professional Help?
Is It Safe To Come To The Ash Wednesday Service?
Struggle: An Invitation to Relational Care
One afternoon, I was sitting in a counseling session with a woman who was discontent in her marriage. They’d been married for fifteen years and have had several children together. “He doesn’t listen. He left me years ago to have an affair with his job,” she said metaphorically but with the sharp edge of truth. I asked her, “when was the last time you felt intimate with your husband?” “Ages,” she replied.
Seeing and Being Seen: The Necessity of Relational Discipleship
In the last year, the various places of our lives have been swept away or altered entirely: schools, workplaces, gyms, team sports, Sunday worship. Like the rest of us, teenagers have spent nearly a year being more deeply formed in a world that is impersonal, digital, mediated by screens or, at best, by masks. The depth of isolation is something many of us have never known. The patterns of life that have come with the pandemic have worked unconsciously to conform all of us, but especially young people, to the belief that our lives are essentially private, that what we feel, think, and do is mostly unseen, and therefore of no consequence or meaning to others.
Faith Over Flash: What makes a good Vestry member?
In a healthy, vibrant, growing young church, there are so many different ways to serve. Some of these roles are highly visible (leading music on a Sunday), some are seen only by a few (leading a fellowship group), while others are almost entirely unseen (sanitizing the sanctuary between services).
Serving on the Vestry occupies a kind of unique in-between ground between public and private service. In one sense, Vestry members have very public and visible roles. Serving as a Vestry member is the greatest responsibility that a lay person can exercise in a Parish. Yet, at the same time, almost everything a Vestry does occurs in secret, behind the scenes. Nobody ever got famous serving on a Vestry!
The Night Before
If you are anything like me, you have aspirations to be a healthy person. You envision the kind of person you’d like to be (perhaps even the kind of person you’re called to be) and you imagine yourself as disciplined, self-controlled, growing, learning, and maturing. Perhaps one aspect of this vision of this “future you” involves rising early to read scripture and pray? The morning devotion is an old standby of the people of God - dating back to the Hebew people of the Old Testament and the early church in the New. For millennia, followers of the one, true God have risen early, shaking off slumber, to keep watch in prayer and meditation on God’s word.
Struggle: An Invitation To Self-Care
At first glance we might think of self-care as little more than self-indulgence—spa treatments, iced coffees, shopping sprees, elaborate vacations, Netflix binges, alcoholic beverages, and consuming pretty much anything that is being advertised. But effective self-care is bound up in recognizing our needs and limitations. As a mental health professional, I appreciate the ways in which self-care practices are essential to health. Sleep habits, diet, exercise, and meaningful hobbies, along with nurturing expressions of community and spiritual practices are important components of our well being. Yet somehow this didn’t connect to my trials of parenting, marriage, COVID-isolation and my own mental health.
The News as Spiritual (De)Formation
Over the past years, and especially in recent months, I have heard a consistent theme of lament from friends in ministry. When asked the question, “What’s the greatest challenge you’re facing when it comes to discipleship in your church?” The answer has been, almost universally, “the News.” When pressed for an explanation, I hear some version of an all-too-common story: “A congregation member’s preferred news source seems to be the most powerful voice in their lives. It tells them what to believe about who they are, the problems of the world, who is at fault, and what to do about it. The news has become a lens through which the Bible, the Christian faith, and (most especially) their local church is interpreted.”
Struggle: What Our Emotions Reveal
It might be easy to assume that the source of my anger was primarily rooted in undesirable circumstances. My children were awake earlier than I preferred so I was annoyed, though perhaps inordinately. But when I took an honest look at my anger, I could see it was much deeper than that. I was angry at the loss of control that I felt.
