beliefs
worship
testimonials
connections
gatherings
conversations
|
conversations
New
Beginnings
By Rev. Jennie Churchman
“Don’t you just love New York in the
fall?
It makes me want to buy school supplies.
I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils
if I knew your name and address.”
Joe Fox (played by Tom Hanks) in You’ve Got Mail
There’s
something about the fall, isn’t there? Even though the year is
coming to an end according to the Gregorian calendar, many of us
actually function according to a different calendar: the school
year. And that means fall is a time of new beginnings for us.
Fall means fresh starts, new friends, exciting challenges,
and–if need be—bouquets of newly sharpened pencils. Of course,
I also always crave new clothes in the fall because of all those
years of back-to-school shopping with my mother. Thank goodness
Rachel has to wear a uniform—it’s much cheaper.
I don’t know about you, but I have been irrevocably programmed
to seek “the new” every fall. Forget January 1; for me, the New
Year begins after Labor Day.
Which is why it is completely fitting for The Way to be
approaching a new beginning this fall. After worshipping in the
main room of the Activities Building on Christmas Eve, The Way
realized the potential of that beautiful space, and we
petitioned the church for permission to move our worship and
congregational life out there permanently. The main room of the
Activities Building suits our worship style and our community
values.
For the past several months, we have been working to make this
vision a reality. We submitted our proposal and followed it
through the various committees and official structures of the
church as it was approved. We’ve spent many hours cleaning up
the space and reorganizing its storage. This summer our
renovation began in earnest with workdays every other Saturday
and almost every Tuesday. By the time we are finished, the main
room of the Activities Building will be transformed—with fresh
paint, new lighting fixtures, a labyrinth on the floor, a bistro
area with hand-crafted tables, a sacred space prayer area, and
many other exciting features.
The work has been long, and it has not always been easy, but we
know that in the end our community will be stronger for it.
Both the work and the new space will serve to breathe new life
into our ministry. This is a time for fresh starts, for
exciting challenges, and, we hope, for new friends. One of the
advantages of moving The Way out to the Activities Building is
that it moves us closer to the people who enjoy our property
every Sunday afternoon. You may not realize it, but there’s an
entire mission field right on our back parking lot every Sunday
afternoon. From the green thumbs in our community garden to the
dog walkers, ball players, bike riders, student drivers and
their parents, and others just out for a stroll, there are
dozens of potential new friends right at our doorstep every
single Sunday.
"Proclaim Christ Boldly” is one of Northway’s five mission
mandates. It is indeed a bold step to move The Way out to the
main room of the Activities Building. Perhaps it is even
risky. But from this new home of ours, we know we can proclaim
Christ boldly to our parking lot friends, to our neighborhood,
and beyond to all those needing to hear the Good News we have to
share. Please join with The Way in prayer as we prepare to make
this move, and come visit. We worship Sundays at 5:00. For the
rest of the summer, you can also find us every other Saturday
and most Tuesdays out in the Activities Building. And if you
want to bring us a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils, they’ll
just help put us in the mood for new beginnings!
Back to Basics
What I’ve Been Reading This Year
By Rev. Jennie Churchman
When Lindsay and I were
making the decision for me to work part time back in 2004, we
knew we had to reduce our family’s consumption to be able to
live on a reduced budget. But this was more than a practical,
financial decision; it was also a moral one. After all, how many
shoes does one woman need anyway? Or how often do I really need
to get my hair done. Or how many dinners should we be eating
out? Or how many DVDs are enough for our family’s video library?
Plus, we were feeling increasingly disconnected from our ethical
and spiritual responsibility to be stewards of this good earth.
We made the commitment then to “walk gently” and take God’s
command seriously to care for what has been given to us. This
decision was not an entirely new one for us. I’ve been cleaning
with baking soda and vinegar almost exclusively since college.
We used cloth diapers for Rachel throughout her entire first
year of life. And I carried tote bags to the grocery store long
before they were “in.”
Resources to help us continue on this journey have dominated
much of my leisure reading in the past year. Of course there
were the gardening books, particularly two great resources for
organic gardening in Texas by J. Howard Garrett: Texas Organic
Vegetable Gardening and Texas Gardening the Natural Way.
Although I had only modest success with my inaugural vegetable
garden, it was still a profoundly spiritual experience for me.
There was something deeply satisfying about planting a seed,
watching it sprout, waiting for it to mature, and then enjoying
the fruits of my labor. I also had the crazy thrill of “making”
soil in that odd science experiment called a compost pile. The
day I turned the pile and discovered a trove of fresh, rich
soil, I jumped up and down and said out loud, “Look what I
made!” Then I stepped back and thought again. No. I didn’t make
that. God made that. I just had the privilege to be part of
God’s ingeniously perfect system. Gardening has made me so much
more aware—and appreciative—of God’s wonderful, creative,
masterful power.
Two other books I read this past year followed along the same
theme. Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tells her
family’s true story of eating only locally-grown and produced
food for an entire year. I’m not sure I could go as far as that,
but I have made much more of an effort to buy from area farmers,
eat produce only in its season, and monitor all of my food
consumption through the lens of what it actually cost to produce
and transport it. I have become a more mindful shopper and eater
because of this book. (Barbara Kingsolver also wrote The
Poinsonwood Bible, a novel that I highly recommend.) Jared
Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed was
a true challenge for me. It is not a pleasant read, but I
believe it is an important read. With an interesting combination
of history, politics, psychology, geography, and other sciences,
this book tells the stories of several cultures throughout human
history that have either thrived or perished because of choices
the people made. I think this book provides a unique perspective
through which to view current geo-political and ecological
issues. (The chapter on Easter Island is particularly chilling
and convicting. If you don’t want to slog through the whole
book, then at least read that chapter.)
But truth be told, I mostly read fiction. It is one my guilty
pleasures! This year I thoroughly enjoyed Steve Berry’s entire
collection of fast-paced, Dan Brown-esque, conspiracy mystery
novels. He has a new one just published called The Charlemagne
Pursuit that I’m anxious to start. All of these books were
great, although I particularly enjoyed The Templar Legacy. And I
do recommend not reading them all at once like I did; the plots
began to run together after about the fourth book. So take your
time and enjoy Steve Berry’s work throughout the year. (And I
totally hesitate to mention this, but mythical-creature, fantasy
loving ladies, you might actually enjoy the Twilight Series!)
Valuing
Connection
By Rev. Jennie Churchman
 Be Real. Be
Deep. Be Connected. Be Living Sacrifices. Be the Body of
Christ. These are the five community values of The Way.
If you asked a member of The Way to tell you what
our community stands for, I’d be willing to bet that every
single person you asked could tell you these five values. We
say them together every week, and we try to live them out every
day. But I’d also be willing to bet that if you asked members
of The Way to tell you what these five values
mean, you would get many different responses. We are
classic Disciples through and through, complete with a diversity
of opinion!
That is why we have spent the Season of Easter exploring more
carefully what these values mean for us as individuals and as a
community. Using Jesus’ parables as our biblical foundation, we
have asked the question each week: Why is it important for our
church to be real, deep, connected, living sacrifices, and the
Body of Christ? Why is it important? That is an excellent
question. If it’s not important, then why bother? I believe we
must be able to articulate the answer to that question if we
want to claim these five values as our own. Take Be Connected,
for example. Why is it important for our church to be
connected.
Jesus was all about creating community. He didn’t go around
preaching, healing, and teaching on his own; he recruited a
community of twelve to help. He didn’t send out the seventy
missionaries to labor for the harvest alone; he sent them out in
pairs. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name,
there I am in the midst of them.” Two or three. Community. We
value community because Jesus valued community. We value
connection because Jesus valued connection.
In January 2007, The Washington Post did an experiment.
They asked world-class violinist Joshua Bell to play at a Metro
station in Washington, D. C. In effect, they asked him to be a
street musician for one morning during rush hour. They wanted
to know: “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would
beauty transcend?” It didn’t. Even though Bell played some of
the most beautiful and challenging pieces ever written for the
violin, and even though he played those pieces on a $3.5 million
Stradivarius, almost everyone ignored him. Of the 1097 people
who passed by Bell that morning, only seven people stopped to
listen, even if only for a few seconds. Seven. The article
laments the fact that we’ve become too busy and too preoccupied
to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us all the time. But I
see something else in this experiment as well. I think we’ve
become too busy and too preoccupied to appreciate the people
that surround us all the time. We don’t want to bother. We
don’t want to be bothered.
When I look around the Metroplex, I see a bunch of people
longing for, aching for connection. I see people with hurts and
hopes who just want someone to share those hurts and hopes
with. I see people who isolate themselves with their iPods,
their cubicles, and sometimes even their hardened demeanors all
because they fear rejection. And I see people who think the
Church is the last place they could ever find genuine
community. How tragic is that?
We are called to be connected. In the Orthodox Church, the
traditional greeting is: “The Christ in me greets the Christ in
you.” It is impossible to remain disconnected and isolated if
you say that to another person—and mean it. I don’t succeed at
this every day, but every day I try to encounter everyone I meet
with this thought running through my mind: The Christ in me
greets the Christ in you. The Christ in me greets the Christ in
you. This has changed the way I see people. And maybe, just
maybe, it has helped some lonely and isolated person feel a
little more connected to the Body of Christ.
links
discussion
board-
2009 - Northway's The One Year
Chronological Bible Study
|
