How about that weather? It didn’t seem like a trivial conversation starter this week. We listened in awe to the wind, rain, snapping trees, popping substations, and emergency responders’ sirens from Sunday night into Monday. (Though it was amazing how many people found Dunkin Donuts open for coffee!) We heard the silence of non-electrified homes, locked schools and businesses, and silent computers on Tuesday. Driving to a rural church conference, I ducked under 4 trees still leaning on power lines, past several utility repairs in process, and around several detours. The ladies at Bartlett Memorial UMC were waiting with a warm church and homemade lunch. On Wednesday, rising irritations became evident on social media as clean laundry ran out, freezers grew warm, and people just wanted to get back to normal. Great the generosity as neighbors “with” offered help to neighbors “without.” Great the rejoicing as utility trucks from away rolled into Maine supplementing already hard working responders here. One little guy was inspired by his lineman grandfather to dress up as such a helper for Halloween. Challenging times are nothing new in human experience. But my generation’s expectations have been set by the season of relative abundance that we grew up in. I say relative, because not everyone shared equally in economic and educational growth. We’ve grown reliant on innovations and inventions that enrich our lives and expand our capacity. When “normal” is interrupted by weather, social discord, or disruptive changes in communication, politics, economics……. (insert your observations here), our values are tested. Our trust in God and each other is tested. In my covenant group this morning we read from 2 Corinthians 8, Now, friends, I want to report on the surprising and generous ways in which God is working in the churches in Macedonia province. Fierce troubles came down on the people of those churches, pushing them to the very limit. The trial exposed their true colors: They were incredibly happy, though desperately poor. The pressure triggered something totally unexpected: an outpouring of pure and generous gifts. I was there and saw it for myself. They gave offerings of whatever they could—far more than they could afford!—pleading for the privilege of helping out in the relief of poor Christians. This was totally spontaneous, entirely their own idea, and caught us completely off guard. What explains it was that they had first given themselves unreservedly to God and to us. The other giving simply flowed out of the purposes of God working in their lives (2 Corinthians 8: 1-7). Paul describes being caught off guard when a crucible of difficulty honed the essential goodness/God-ness of this young Christian community. He has only words of encouragement to add: So, here’s what I think: The best thing you can do right now is to finish what you started last year and not let those good intentions grow stale. Your heart’s been in the right place all along. You’ve got what it takes to finish it up, so go to it. Once the commitment is clear, you do what you can, not what you can’t. The heart regulates the hands. This isn’t so others can take it easy while you sweat it out. No, you’re shoulder to shoulder with them all the way, your surplus matching their deficit, their surplus matching your deficit. In the end, you come out even. As it is written, Nothing left over to the one with the most, Nothing lacking to the one with the least. -2 Corinthians 8:13-15 The Message (MSG) By Wednesday morning I was able to walk my neighborhood river route. A neighbor’s meditation garden (open to the public) offered serene calm beside the roiling Androscoggin. Our confidence in Christ can offer that kind of deep breath in whatever challenge or chaos arises. It requires following through on our good intentions to become more like Christ each day. In other words, it takes practices of re-connecting with God in scripture, seeking Christ in prayer, and overcoming any reluctance to test and follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in daily acts of grace. May you know God’s grace in this week of opportunity. Your Partner in Christ, Karen
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God’s potterly hands reach down constantly to work the clay of creation. Scripture is full of stories of leaders, as potter’s apprentices, re-forming the beloved community: Josiah, Jehoshaphat, Nehemiah, Paul and, of course, Jesus. Some reformers get to experience the new community and others glimpse its possibility. “I can almost see it from here,” said Moses from the top of Mount Pisgah.
What reforming could we see if we gathered in retreat on our own Mt Pisgah in Winthrop, Maine and if our eyesight could extend across the MidMaine District? What re-forming do we long for with our God hungry hearts? Are we committed to what reform will require of us: closer reading of scripture, committed time in prayer alone and in fellowship, seeing our neighbors with new eyes? These are the elements of previous reforms in Christian history. This weekend, Christians across the western world will celebrate the influence, if not the perfection, of German reformer Martin Luther. Luther …. taught that every person — butcher, baker or homemaker — is called by God. So, when United Methodists say that every person — whether lay or clergy — is called to ministry, they are echoing Luther. (UMNS) Luther’s effect on Western civilization has been profound. Although he was famous not only for his radical re-formation ideas, but also for his fierce advocacy of the implications he drew from scripture, his ideas opened the way toward a pluralist world. “Going into the Reformation, the assumption was that to have a united empire, everybody had to be of the same confession,” [Dr. Anna M Johnson] said. “It’s a huge shift to say we can have parts of the empire that belong to different confessions and this will not undermine the empire as a whole. We don’t need to have uniformity to still have a cohesive society that functions.” (UMNS) The roadmap to reform matters. (There’s also a Pisgah in Boothbay Harbor, do we know which way we’re going when we set out for either of these beautiful views?) For Jesus followers, scripture is our roadmap. Hearing Luther’s preface to the Romans re-formed John Wesley’s understanding of his own salvation on that famously heartwarming night, May 24, 1738. Yet part of our own re-forming comes with eyes across history that see the damage done by Luther’s toxic views of Jewish neighbors. John Wesley thought that what Luther needed was a good honest discipleship group to help form him! Wesley wrote of Luther in 1749. “But O! what pity that he had no faithful friend! None that would, at all hazards, rebuke him plainly and sharply, for his rough, untractable spirit, and bitter zeal for opinions, so greatly obstructive of the work of God!" (UMNS) As we mark this 500th anniversary of the Reformation, may our own hearts be moved toward that deeper discipleship together that will lead to us being more like Jesus when we go to sleep each night than we were when we arose in the morning. Life in Christ is that simple, and that difficult. Your Partner in Christ, Karen 10-19-17 e-news “Strange Community” I realized at breakfast today that I am part of a strange community. Here we are at Rolling Ridge Retreat Center, blessed with brilliant autumn views of Lake Cochichewic, gathered as the Board of Ordained Ministry to interview provisional elders and deacons for the leadership of the church (and to accomplish many other vital tasks like planning for support of Licensed Local Pastors, and anti-racism work. And just as I was scooping some oatmeal into my bowl to fortify myself for the long day ahead, a voice spoke up inviting us to prayer. Each person in that busily humming room stopped mid-sentence, mid-scoop, mid-phone check to open ourselves to grace pouring into the room. It wasn’t the first time this strange community thought has struck me like an illuminating arrow, that to stop is as pleasing to God as to go. Each has a purpose in our Inward/outward journeys together. [God] said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. -Exodus 33: 14 During my conversations with pastors this year, time management was the #1 resource request. Moses was a busy man. In charge of moving thousands of people of all ages and capacities into wilderness, away from well-known and practiced bondage and toward unknown territory. He led in extreme conflict. You name the type of human conflict and it happened during his watch: with the regime, with local leaders, with neighbors, with his brother (and assistant), and with God. Did people think it was strange when he took intensive time “off” to listen to, wrestle with, and be refreshed by God? It seems to me that they got into the most trouble when they were unwilling to follow his Sabbathing example and tried to just get on with pressing issues. Making our time “work” is not a matter of better calendar systems or other organizational tools (though they are very helpful in their place). Making our time matter comes when we remember why we are here, to encounter, be formed by, and share the radical love of our creating God. Managing to spend time with God is not dessert, it’s the feast. Like Moses, when our priorities flow out of set aside time and like the Board of Ordained Ministry, when we are vulnerable to God’s interruptions, our lives take on a strange quality. Time flows around God’s presence and purpose instead of feeling cobbled together by our own efforts to balance it all. “Taste and See” by James Moore Refrain: Taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Oh, taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord. 1 I will bless the Lord at all times. Praise shall always be on my lips; my soul shall glory in the Lord; for God has been so good to me. (Refrain) 2 Glorify the Lord with me. Together let us all praise God's name. I called the Lord, who answered me; from all my troubles I was set free. (Refrain) 3 Worship the Lord, all you people. You’ll want for nothing if you ask. Taste and see that the Lord is good; in God we need put all our trust. (Refrain) On this beautiful first day of September, we are full of both blessing and challenge. The sky is blue and our eyes are full of images-water devastating the Gulf coast of our country. Children have tumbled more or less happily back into school, exciting ministry plans are bubbling up all over MidMaine and we are mourning the imminent loss of our beloved colleague in ministry, Connie to cancer. Life tumbles it all together. In an interview last week, Canadian detective author Louise Penny recommended presidents read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. It’s an ancient Roman secular equivalent to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount with words for living a blessed life. Each of them, Marcus Aurelius and Jesus, was responding to crowds’ expectations, one as a general, surrounded by the demands of soldiers and devastation of war, the other as a rabbi, hemmed in by the sin sick, the diseased, the deformed, the hungry. The apostle Paul also offers words of blessing in the midst of challenge: Let love be genuine…….outdo one another in showing honor……. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. …….Do not repay anyone evil for evil….. No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.-Romans 12:9-21 Paul’s humanity peaks through with the line “heap burning coals on their heads” while he’s trying to point to a better way. He and Jesus are both in conversation with crowds and with their tradition. They are answering songs that sing out the people’s heart felt cries when they’re up against challenges: Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering….. I do not sit with the worthless, nor do I consort with hypocrites; I hate the company of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked. -Psalm 26:1-8 I’m so glad that the Psalmist also sings: you set a table in the presence of my enemies. -Psalm 23 To hate is to reject. Paul, Aurelius, and Jesus all try to teach us how to live with honor and blessing, rejecting (hating) evil without rejecting (hating) each other. Jesus’ own humanity shows through under stress in this week’s gospel lectionary: From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." But [Jesus] turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." - Matthew 16:21-28 Jesus, using brotherly language, not neighborly language, is aggravated at a close friend whose love tempts him to turn from the purpose God lays before him. He doesn’t literally think that Peter has become demonic, but their minds are not aligned and his choice of words startles beloved Peter into realizing that. It is not a conversation between strangers. Our national conversations are becoming muddled. When are we speaking to brothers and sisters? When are our words directed to neighbors…or to strangers? What hope has God embedded in these relationships? Do our words uncover that hope or bury it deep, distort or transform? While one singer evasively sings, I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O LORD –Psalm 26:6, Novelist, and Christian, Madelaine L’Engle writes of the path through pain and challenge in “Other Side of the Sun”: In this parched place of desolate wilderness, This war-torn, hate-split world, oh, who will bless Bless and redeem the blood-stained, tear-drenched ground So once again the healing sun will blaze, The small birds sing, the flowers be found, And lion and lamb in loving joy may graze? Who is there left the truth of love to guess? How shall we stand the violence of the sun? How hate redeem, how brother’s love confess? What will be left when wind and fire are done? Only on love’s terrible other side Is found the place where lion and lamb abide. What L’Engle calls the “other side of the sun” is seen where Life after Hate helps neo-Nazi’s out of their social chains and Ft. Smith neighbors reach across differences to bring forgiveness after vandalism. Going through life’s toughest moments of losing friends, rebuilding houses and hope, talking through differences brings us by God’s grace to a place where we can sing together a song of thanksgiving, and telling all your wondrous deeds. O LORD, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides.-Psalm 26: 7-8 In this week’s lectionary, we see a Pharaoh who has forgotten and a Messiah cultivating memory. For the Pharaoh, Joseph has no impact on his life. He doesn’t remember the hard times of famine. He has lost sight of being saved. He’s not aware of needing relationship with Jacob’s descendants or of needing any leadership gifts other than his own. Jacob’s people become objects to be controlled for the sake of the nation’s economy. Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor…. Exodus 1:8-2:10 Generations later the apostle Paul spoke words I wish Pharaoh could have heard so that he could have been brought in to the diverse body of God’s “remembering people”. “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think,…. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us” (Romans 12: 1-8). It was 2 midwives who remembered and kept alive a slender thread of relationship between two peoples. Shiphrah and Puah are the only two Egyptian women remembered in Exodus by name. They knew the Israelites. One line of conversation from woman to woman kept baby Moses alive. Last Sunday, Rev. Chong Choi preached an awesome sermon about the power of the words we choose. He addressed the “murmuring” that plagues so many churches in which we know the people we live side by side so well we forget the sacred nature of those relationships. Jesus asked his friends, who were coming to know well in daily life together, “who am I to you?” “What’s my role in your life?” Matthew 16: 13-20. It’s an important question for each of our faith walks, worthy of a day of retreat and prayer, of practice remembering why Jesus matters to each of us personally and all of us together. I’m also starting to think it’s a question we should ask each other, both in the body of Christ and in the wider world. “Who am I to you?” “What impact do my actions and presence have on your life?” A question can be more powerful than a teaching. Or rather, a question can prompt shared teaching that comes when people are open to each other. “Where does it hurt?” is the basis of an interview with theologian Dr. Ruby Sales that re-aired this week via On Being. A time of pain in her own life that led to the moment when she “realized God had always been with me, even when I wasn’t with myself” and led her back to faith. Asking that question of young people has transformed her relationships with them. Listening can be more powerful than speaking. Our summer Basic Lay Servant Ministry class has been practicing listening in deeper ways each week. It is a sacred time knitting relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ of diverse ages. But many young people have not found those listening places in our churches. Young people are flocking to “On Being”, an audio landscape that creates relationship between disparate voices. It’s time we remember that, as saved and gifted people, we are called to be humble leaders and listeners, reminding others through our listening that they are also gifted and beloved children of God. We may find Christ there, asking “who am I to you?” In God’s Grace, Karen When God said to Moses and Aaron, This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you (Exodus 12: 2), the powerful and enduring Passover tradition was born. In the Methodist tradition, July 1 marks “the first month of the year” for us. New pastoral appointments begin. Continuing appointments are affirmed. In some churches, lay leadership teams discover new levels of giftedness and service to Christ. All of this is in God’s time and purpose. What rituals do you practice around this Methodist “New Year?” When serving church & community as a pastor, I announced and celebrated my re-appointment each year as an opportunity to keep the itineracy in sight and to remember that our life together is framed by God’s purpose. On an individual level, in the weeks after each year’s New England annual conference I spend some time with the ordination service bulletin, remembering and reexamining, reliving and recommitting to the covenant I entered in 1998. The “General Examination” (found in the ordination service liturgies) offers a rule of life for ordained UMC pastors. Reexamining it annually always surfaces things I’ve let submerge and affirms others I’ve held fast. It begins with the declaration of collaborative ministry that I hold dear: My kindred, sisters and brothers in Christ, as commissioned or ordained ministers, you are to be coworkers with bishops, elders, deacons, local pastors, provisional members, diaconal ministers, deaconesses, home missioners, supply pastors, and all the people of God. What a powerful group of co-workers! The words that bind that group together and help us become more like Jesus each day are found later in the liturgy in an invitiaotn to commit to what gives us life: Will you give yourself to God through the order or fellowship, in order to sustain and build each other up in prayer, study, worship and service under the rule of life set forth in the vows you take this day? It is absolutely vital that our fellowshipping include these practices: prayer, study, worship and service, if we are to become more like Jesus than we were when we began so that the world may be transformed into God’s full vision of love and justice. And isn’t that the point of discipleship? And isn’t that the point of the Methodist movement? We are seeking to grow as disciples whose lives will do nothing less than change the world around us. Perhaps this new year is good time to review and renew the practices of your covenant group, Sunday School class, or other discipleship group. In this year’s ordination service, the General Examination was preceded by a powerful solo performance of Song of the Open Road (setting by Mark Miller). Allons! The road is before us It is safe, I have tried it My own feet have tried it well Be not detained Whoever you are come travel with me! Traveling with me you find what never tires. I did not know I held so much goodness! Allons! Congratulations on whatever beginning or re-beginning you are part of in July 2017. May the goodness God gives you grow and flourish. Your Partner in Christ, Karen This little guy has been on my desk as a blessing from Beverly since I began last July 1. As I pray up churches, extension ministries and pastors preparing for new beginnings, I remain grateful for the good work that preceded me and joyful for the good work that will, someday, follow me. Each of us is given specific ministry purposes in God’s good time.
I’ve thought a lot about purposeful ministry this past year. It’s not that ministry is ever aimless, but the essential role of context has become more apparent than ever. “I was trained not to change lives but to produce church members.” Blake Bradford shared this comment from one of his workshops with Board of Ordained Ministry Leaders at last fall’s quadrennial training. That was the context of church I grew up in. We had what Bishop Janice Huie calls a “pipeline” that moved people from birth/baptism to camp to confirmation to college to committees to leadership so that Christ’s good news could saturate our communities. Somewhere along the line the pipeline developed leaks. It’s time for a new metaphor, that of ecosystem, rather than pipeline, she says. “So that” is a biblical statement. (Ex. 25:8; Mt 5:16, John 3:16…) Bearing Fruits, by Tom Berlin and Lovett Weems emphasizes this phrase’s power to move us into more purposeful use of the gifts God gives us in the context where God has placed us. I love the way Lovett’s article this week in Leading Ideas connects that sense of contextual purpose with the power that we have as leaders. The third source of a leader’s authority comes from the calling of the context. Leadership is finally about real people in actual circumstances. Proverbs says that “when the righteous are in authority, the people flourish.” Paul speaks of authority being used for “building up” and not for “tearing down.” People may give us a leadership position, but the authority needed to lead must be worked out among the people with whom we serve. An essential element of authority comes from the credibility a leader establishes with the people the leader works with most closely. James Kouzes speaks of credibility as “credit-ability.” People analyze our credibility all the time just as a bank might assess our credit worthiness. Indeed, credibility is the working capital of the leader. A leader draws from the account of credibility to make change possible. Church leaders share a calling from God, experienced in each of our lives. We share a calling from the church expressed in our forms of ministry. We share a calling of context in our local and global communities yearning for hope and healing. This is where the power and integrity of our ministry lives because it is where the Spirit is moving, recreating the ecosystem of human life in God’s creation. So! May your ministry in this new season be blessed as you live into the peculiar, propelling, particular call that will nurture and challenge you to be a gifted agent of God’s grace SO THAT all God's children actually experience God's purposeful love. I had the pleasure of sharing Pentecost with North Sebago UMC’s music and prayer dynamos. Who’d a thought a little ‘ole church could incubate such melody and witness to Christ’s presence!? Rev. DanaBeth Wells Goodwin got me thinking with the challenge, “If we want the Holy Spirit to help us by interpreting, we have to give up the obstacles that keep us from hearing.”
“They must be drunk!” (Acts 2:13) What’s your brush off for irritating words or behavior? I think we all have default thoughts that put someone in their place (at least in our own mind, golf foursome, or Facebook page): “they must be”……dumb, wrong, evil, silly, old, young, liberal, conservative, uneducated, brainwashed,“ from away. But starting to listen, not just hear, requires that we recognize our own barriers and lower them. “Listen,” Peter said. (Acts 2:14) We now live in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance. Even acting with good intentions, we fear offending. We see so much, hear so much, and can make sense of so little. What’s a fact, what’s a lie, what’s a perception? We are uncomfortably challenged to re-examine politicians we trust, to rethink images and identities of beloved entertainers, to recognize our own implicit bias, to admit benefits and privilege from choices made long before we were alive, to examine what facts are trustworthy. It’s disorienting. What forms of knowledge can we rely on? Do we really know anyone……? including ourselves? Can we really trust anyone…? including ourselves? I find it easy to develop defensive reactions and fall into the relatively comfortable spaces of like-minded people. There’s a reason this paragraph is full of questions not answers. Open questions are a movement toward listening. And without listening, there is no understanding. In Peter’s original Pentecost sermon, he spoke to people whose reality was rocked by death at the hands of the empire and resurrection in the hands of God. Peter’s words were not high handed judgement but a straight forward naming of reality. I wonder how I’d react if God spoke that directly to me today. What questions would I be able to voice? Would I duck and cover or open my arms? Would I blow frantically against the spark trying to ignite my heart, or dance with the flames? This is the scripture text of Peter’s long ago, fresh today sermon: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. Those sons, daughters, young and elderly are prophesying today. Sometimes they are shouting out loud in the public square. Sometimes they are quietly repairing tears in creation’s fabric and hurts in human hearts. The Spirit is being poured out and is re-forming God’s people. And God is speaking: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matthew 28:16-20 Now is the time to listen, to ask, to dance, to fan the flame, to re-member what it means to be a loving disciple who offers to walk with others in repairing the world and talk of Christ’s good news rather than coercing them to imitate us. Now is the time God is re-forming our faith communities in ways that feel threatening if we hold onto our fears, confusing if we try to carry too much of the beloved past with us. Today is the day that God’s quiet clear voice can overcome irritation and open our ears and hearts, our doors and our hands. In God’s Grace, Karen PS We'll return shorty to reading "Bearing Fruit!" Why does a church exist? This week I’ve been trying to write about that as I read chapter 2, An invitation to Labor for Gods Harvest, from “Bearing Fruit” by Lovett Weems and Tom Berlin. But what actually appears on the screen is either, “why does a church excite”, or “why does a church exit?” Spell-check’s constantly hovering presence surfaced a very real set of underlying options. What about you, is your church exciting or exiting? Why does your church exist? Answers often start with what the church does and move to what the church hopes it is. For example, Tallyho UMC sponsors polo matches, hymn sings, children’s dance classes, etc… and is a welcoming community. What a church does with its time and resources reveals what it values most. These choices create the actual container, the form, of the church’s mission. The character of a church as it does these things, the quality of its life together, reveals how it experiences Christ. The character of a church reveals its theology, what it understands, or doesn’t, about Jesus. Vision is what your church exists to become. Recently, lay members of Belfast UMC spoke with no small sense of wonder about their transformative church supper experience. Now, I have heard church suppers called many things, but never transformative. A few years ago, under the strain of last minute calls for more casseroles and worry about how much money each supper would, or wouldn’t, bring in for the church’s budget, two finance people asked the really big question, “why are we doing this?” While the suppers had once been an exciting community project that built church community, now it wasn’t helping them become who they knew God wants them to be. So, remembering that they exist to people in the community around them with God’s love, Belfast UMC stepped out in faith. They (1) made doing suppers fun with a new creative teamwork and (2) stopped charging their guests. Now three times as many people attend and they receive as much in donations as they did from tickets. More importantly, they create a welcoming environment so that people are comfortable being themselves while brushing up against Christian community at its best. What does your church exist to do? What difference does it make? http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=155805 What does your church exist to be? How does it look like Jesus? Do you have a plan for becoming what you’ve glimpsed is God’s exciting desire for your existence? If you haven’t, you’re on the way to the exit. There is no autopilot that can take you there. Next week: “So that,” the two most powerful word for fruitful discipleship. A few weeks ago, I attended the funeral of a woman who was the spiritual mother of many. Gwen White inspired through music, programs in children and spirituality, retreats, and spiritual direction. She inspired me to be patient with my wiggly young children in church. But what I admired most about her was way she could take an assortment of friends and craft a circle of discipleship that endured over years.
Going through records headed for the NE archives this winter, we came across other mothers in faith. There’s a pastoral record in which one still living sister in Christ, was rated (by her husband) in her role as the Pastor’s spouse. It notes she was cooperative with the total church program (!), who kept her house neatly, her person well groomed, and her children happy; that she was in generally good mental health and emotional balance. Rev. Alice Hart is merely mentioned in the notes that remain, but in her lifetime, she followed Christ’s call to become one of the first four women in the United States admitted to membership in an annual conference in the Methodist Church. They are sometimes called the “Four H’s” as all had last names beginning with “H.” She loved counseling, religious writing, and oil painting, besides her own two children, and the children of God she nurtured in the many churches she served. There are notes on paper that remember Rev. Kathleen Weed, beloved and creative MidMaine Pastor, early friend of Mechuwana, ordained an elder in 1949 by Bishop John Wesley Lord, but not able to become a clergy member of the Maine Annual Conference until 1957, when the prohibitions against women was lifted. (She was born in Avon, Maine where the original drafter of the Discipline’s restrictive rules was raised over a century before.) “She was really an expert in the leading of worship techniques, very good in leading the people in experiences of reverence and devotion.” remembered Rev. Ed Allen. In their book, “Bearing Fruit: Ministry with Real Results,” Lovett Weems and Tom Berlin trace the fruit of God’s expanding reign, the fruit of righteousness, and the fruit of justice in Scripture that these faith mothers loved dearly enough to share with others. “….God calls the covenant people to live lives of fruitfulness,” Lovett and Tom write, “We are to labor for the advance of God’s reign for righteousness to be normative to the human character, and for justice to bless everyone. Just as in the past, God intends for the covenant people of today to be fruitful and make disciples in response to the grace we know in Christ Jesus.” I have been blessed to serve in churches where these women, lay and clergy, walked before me. Each of them lived the biblical mandate for fruitfulness in their life and work. They planted, they tended, they pruned. The resistance they faced takes other forms in the church today. Each of them found ways to treat resistance as creative tension, holding true to God’s vision, pruning prejudice, pruning unfruitful practices, pruning anything within themselves that was not life giving. May we be inspired to do the same, by the breath of the same living Christ Spirit that kissed the world through their lives. In God’s Grace, Karen |
Karen L MunsonA pastor and artist, I'm wondering while I'm wandering through God's marvelous creation. Archives
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