When It's not the best time of the year

Blue Christmas Service
Wednesday, December 19
4:30 PM

The constant refrain on radio and television, in shopping malls and churches, about the happiness of the Christmas Season, about getting together with family and friends, reminds many people of what they have lost or have never had. The anguish of broken relationships, the insecurity of unemployment, the weariness of ill health, the pain of isolation, the gut wrenching loss of a child, the loneliness of no longer having a beloved spouse to share each day, the loss of a dear family pet - all these can contribute to a feeling of being alone, of 'feeling blue' in the midst of others 'being happy' and 'celebrating'. There are years when we hurt at Christmas time and can't get into the festivities others seem to be able to do.
It's at such times that we need to make the space and take the time to acknowledge our sadness and concern. We need to know that we are not alone. For these reasons, Broadus invites you at 4:30 pm Wednesday, December 19 to come and join in sharing and hearing prayers, Scripture, music, and sharing communion in ways that acknowledge that God's presence is for those who mourn, for those who struggle - and that God's Word comes to shine light into our darkness.
Please accept this invitation to be with us - a time for those feeling 'blue' to experience the wonder and hope of Christmas. No need to RSVP - our doors will be open to all who come so please feel free to invite others to come with you as your support, or if you know that they too are finding that Christmas hurts.

Jamaica Mission Trip Planned

On August 19th, while we were sitting in church, the southern coast of Jamaica was battered by Hurricane Dean. Shortly thereafter, the Virginia Baptists committed to providing supplies and work teams to repair the homes of folks who are now homeless. We are getting a group together to be one of those teams.

One week, between February and April, we want to take a group to Jamaica to repair homes and make relationships that, we hope, will turn into a long-term partnership between our church and Jamaican Baptists. My hope is that eventually we can partner with the Jamaicans to work in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

If you would be interested in swinging a hammer for a week and meeting some new folks from a different part of the world--and being a part of God's restorative and redemptive work in the world, please let me know. I'd love to work along side you.

Interesting Evangelism Strategy

 

Sigh.


I saw this invitation to a new life in Jesus in the parking lot of a state park in Michigan this weekend. I was in Grand Rapids visiting Mars Hill Church. Mars Hill was a great experience. Their mission statement is telling of their commitments, "To live out the way of Jesus in misisonal communities and to announce the arrival of His Kingdom by working for measurable change among the oppressed." Somehow, I don't think the owner of this vehicle has the same spirit as my new friends at MH. Just a guess.

A New Social Gospel?

I remember thinking as far back as early in college that I didn’t fit in the categories that were out there.  It seemed like (now remember this IS 1980’s Texas I’m remembering); it seemed like people were either conservative Christians or liberal democrats/ atheists.  I didn’t mind a lot of the ethical positions of conservative Christians, but my atheistic/ democratic friends (that was a sort of redundancy back then and there, I must admit.)  cared more about the things that Jesus seemed to care about than my conservative Christian friends.  It seemed like people were either on this ‘side’ or that ‘side’ and I didn’t fit either one.  I appreciated some of moral positions of one group and some of the economic/ social positions of the other group. 

 

I remember even asking in seminary, in an ethics class, who’s doing this right?  Who is really embracing the “Politics of Jesus”—to borrow from John Howard Yoder’s wonderful and challenging book--?  The response was “The Catholics”.  Well, ok.  Maybe.  But, nothing against Catholics at all, but that didn’t seem like a likely path for me. 

 

What I have since come to discover is that there were then and are now a LOT of people feeling like I was and do.  People feeling like our faith and our faith commitments had been hijacked by political parties who use religious leaders to drive the masses to their political brethren.  I’m not really a ‘masses’ kind of person.  I bet you aren’t either.  It doesn’t seem so revolutionary to say it, but it seems like it is to practice it: Jesus is bigger than any one political party.

 

I’ve come to appreciate the folks who identify themselves as ‘emergent’.  They are seeking and finding a new paradigm for what it means to live out our faith in all areas of life: social issues, economic issues, political, religious—without being herded as, you know, ‘the masses”.  It just seems like with the emergent folks, the fences are lying in scrap pieces all over the landscape.  It’s messier than having the fences in place, predictably dividing us.  But Jesus was pretty messy too.  It just seems to me that our nation needs a little less vitriolic religiocentic partisanship and a lot more thoughtful, prayerful, engaging, loving, truth-telling Jesus following on whatever the issue may be and whatever the cost to us.

 

Here’s an interesting article from Newsweek about what’s happening among New Evangelicals trying to transform the world:

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15566389/site/newsweek/

 

 

Transformational Ministry

Here is a link to a story that PBS’ Religion and Ethics Newsweekly did on Lawndale Community Church in Chicago.  It’s another example of a local church making a significant difference in the life of its community. 

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1102/feature.html#

 

This kind of ministry seems to me what Jesus would have us be about.

 

Here’s the church’s website too: http://www.lawndalechurch.org/

Email address change

Greetings.

I have changed my email from ericahowell@earthlink.net
My new email address is:

ehowell95@gmail.com

After October 31, I will not be able to receive mail through earthlink.
Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience. 

Eric

PS For those of you who received so much enjoyment from 'erica', your days are thankfully numbered.

Recent Concerts

The last two weekends, we have been treated to some remarkably wonderful music as part of our House Concert and CoffeeHouse series.  We are so fortunate in Charlottesville to be blessed with tremendous talent in music and the arts.  At our House Concert we had Peyton Trochterman and High Society perform.  They were great.  These guys blew away the small-but-enthusiastic crowd away with thoughtful lyrics, trumpet riffs by John D’Earth, and Matty Metcalfe on the accordion.  The whole evening was a lot of fun for everyone.  Here’s a link to his site: http://www.peytontochterman.com/.  The Paramount Theater has invited High Society to perform a CD release party.  They are the first local band to be welcomed to the Paramount—and with good reason.  On Sunday evening, we were blessed to have Alex Mejias give a warm, spiritual Coffee House concert at Broadus.  Alex is a local musician who loves to play re-tuned hymns and other spiritually rich melodies.  He left Monday morning for Nashville to record his next album. 

 

My only regret about both events is that more people weren’t there to enjoy them.  I don’t really know what to do about that (if anything can be done.)  Perhaps we need to do a better job getting the word out or personally inviting people.  Well, whatever the case, this kind of stuff is just too good not to share.  I genuinely feel that way about our whole church experience.  This stuff is just too good not to share. 

 

Huge props to the folks who pulled these events together, Jacob Goodson in particular.  All of you did a really nice job! 

 

One Old Church Adapts

One of our alert members forwarded me this article from this week's New York Times. A white, Southern Baptist Church in Georgia that was sinking woke up to the changing reality around them . . .and changed radically!

An Old Church Adapts

Radical change has a cost and some people were left behind along the way. Not every congregation can and should so radically change, but perhaps far fewer do it who should.

One interesting aspect of this church's transition is the response the church made to a changing world. In their case, the change in the world was evident to those who had eyes to see--internationals were transitioning the neighborhood in significant ways.
For most of us the shifts are less obvious--but just as significant. Our community specifically has groups of people who are as different from traditional Baptist church-goers as the Eastern Europeans and Africans in Georgia. To significantly reach post-moderns may require shifts in our approach and outlook that rival that of the Georgia church and feel radical to all of us to varying degrees.

It seems like the big first issue is to recognize that we are increasingly in a post-Christian culture. This should be no real surprise to us. Peter said that Christians would be residents in an alien culture. The opportunities are no less than the Georgia church faced--increasing numbers of neighbors who do not know much at all about Christ and even less about church.

The second big issue is: what, if anything, are we going to do about it? How pro-active will we be in living out the gospel and sharing the story of Jesus right here in ways that meet people right where they are?

Sep 9 Town Hall summary

Thanks to everyone who was a part of our visioning town hall meeting last week.  The attendance and interest was impressive.  In a nutshell, on behalf of the visioning community, we presented three aspects of the process at this time.  1) We revisited ‘core beliefs’ and distributed a revised draft.  You can view that draft by scanning a couple of posts below.  We welcome your comments.  2) We began a process to identify and articulate core values of the church.  Core values express the ways that we do church.  Every church is different.  These values ought to express what is at the very center of what makes Broadus what it is.  3) We presented three areas in the community for focused ministry in the coming years: a) Senior Adults, b) Wilton Farm, c) Fontana, as representative of the many other similar neighborhoods in the Pantops area.  The visioning community has divided into three teams to research and examine these areas and paint a picture of what these ministries could look like over the next 10 years.  We will come back with a report and further conversation in Town Hall session on November 18.  Thanks for your input and continued participation in this process. 

What is postmodernism?

The term ‘postmodern’ gets thrown around a lot these days to describe everything from philosophy to architecture to technology, to how ‘disobedient and disrespectful’ the younger generation is today.  But what does it really mean?  Admittedly the definition is a bit slippery.  I heard a bit of an interesting conversation on NPR last night that was helpful to me in articulating what postmodernism is all about.  The speaker put it in terms of English grammar and a bit of history. 

 

When the Enlightenment emerged and, with it, science and reason, the world of thought was broken into two very different spheres: Fact and Opinion.  Facts were things that could be ‘proved’ scientifically.  Opinions were anything that could not be ‘proved’ by the methods that were approved for proving things.  Get it?  So, Fact and Reason is the world of science.  Opinion is the world of emotion and religion.  Religion, faith, belief—whatever you want to call it was (and still is) relegated to the realm of personal opinion.  So that’s how you get politicians who can say, “My religion will have no influence on the way I govern the nation.”  Think about that statement again.  What they are saying is that My religion (the world of opinion) will not have an impact on the way I govern (the world of facts and reason) the nation.  In a modern context that is a perfectly acceptable answer.  Or take a church-going religious person who prays on Sunday (his personal opinion) and then runs his business (the world of reason) during the week according to what is reasonable for generating maximum profit without any consideration for Christian virtues that might inform how he treats his employees. 

 

This distinction gives rise to breaking our lives apart into Public and Private.  Economics and Science are public.  Religion and Faith are private.  Thus, “My (private) religion will have no influence on the way I govern (public) the nation.”  Well, that’s just one example.  It’s really a question of how we know things.  How do you know something is true?  The modernist says, “I have facts that prove it.  If it cannot be proven by the scientific method, it’s just your personal opinion.”  

 

Now, in terms of grammar.  In grammar, there are three persons: 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd.  (I, you, he/ she/it)

 

First person is the world of opinion (What I believe to be true; what I feel)

Third person is the world of ‘fact’ (What is proven)

 

Postmodernism looks at this and asks two questions, “Who are you who believe something to be true?” and “By what criteria do you determine something to be fact?”  The answer that postmodernists offer for both questions is the 2^nd person—the world of social location—the you (plural, likely).  Each of us is part of a larger story that any of us standing alone.  Acknowledge it or not, you are part of a complex social matrix comprised of your socioeconomics, skin color, religious heritage, national identify, time in history, and on and on.)  This “2^nd person” identity is informative and formative for who you are even when you think you are coming to independent conclusions about what you believe.  And furthermore, this “2^nd person” identify is formative for how you determine what is factual (3^rd person). 

 

Some postmodernists go so far as to say that there is no 1^st person and no 3^rd person.  You cannot come to independent conclusions aside from who you are in your social location and there are no universal facts at all—everything is a product of your social location.  (While I’m compelled by the postmodern correction of modernism, I think this goes a bit far—but hey, who am I, right?)

 

This move to postmodernism has everything to do with young people returning to Tradition in worship and church.  The modern manifestation of church is a worship service disconnected from the social construct (the Tradition) from which it comes.  It’s a ‘contemporary’ service that doesn’t use church language, church symbols, or anything having to do with church.  It only focuses on the 1^st person (what are you feeling today—what is your private belief in God and why you should have such a belief (the fact of the authority of the Bible).  Postmodern or ‘emergent’ movements return to the second person and young people are leading the way.  They are saying, “We know we are part of a bigger story and we want to experience it.”  So, let us experience the richness of the Tradition, but make that Tradition as expansive as possible, including elements not found in our parents and grandparents American, Protestant services—that’s not wide or deep enough.  Give us Celtic meditations, Orthodox prayer practices, Catholic candles, give us incense and silence, give us ways to express our own appropriation of the Tradition and then let us lead the way.  Be honest about the chaotic and mysterious origins of the Biblical letters and their formation as the church’s canon.  It’s a 2^nd person book of narrative, not a 3^rd person book of fact disembodied from the community that produced and collected it.  I want to be part of something bigger than me, but also something that makes me part of the community as well.  Give me a worship/ church experience that is 3^rd person (tell me what is known and I can trust), 2^nd person (let me experience who we are together), and 1^st person (let me experience all of this for myself and make it my own.)  Isn’t it interesting in light of the grammar of faith that theologians long ago figured that God is best understood to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--One in three persons.