By Blair Pogue

 

At our May meeting St. Matthew's Vestry affirmed the vision of gifts-based ministry we've been living into for some time now. This affirmation makes the vision we believe God has been calling us into more explicit.

 

It is easy in this time of great change in the church world - and in many other places for that matter - to cling to the past and "the way we've always done things." Thankfully this has not been much of a challenge at St. Matthew's where there is more openness to the Holy Spirit's leading than most churches I've experienced.

 

At the same time, it is easy to have a set idea of what various ministries "should look like," based on past church experiences. It is not uncommon for church members to have strong ideas about what the youth or other ministries should be like, regardless of whether or not a particular model or way of doing things actually fits the congregation's gifts, values and calling.

 

Gifts-based ministry is grounded in the assumption that God has given each faith community everything they need to engage in the ministries they are called to in their particular context. It means that any discernment or wondering process will involve assessing the gifts and assets of faith community members, as well as populations with whom they wish to partner and work. It means being willing to be flexible, and to change, if the gifts of a particular group point to a new or different way of engaging in their ministry.

 

One way St. Matthew's is already engaging in gifts-based ministry is our Sunday school program. As she prepares for the fall, Terese Lewis, our Director of Youth and Intergenerational Ministry, assesses the interests and passions of our children and young adults, the gifts of the young adults and adults who will work with them, and the vision of the Christian life that has been discerned among us. This year, she had our children explore some of the spiritual practices in St. Matthew's communally-discerned Way of Jesus using Legos, drama, and art-three areas of creativity and play loved by our youngest children. The fruit was amazing: the children were enthusiastic, they made sure their parents brought them to church, and they had time and space to explore these spiritual practices in community-learning in action.

 

In the days ahead the Vestry and I encourage the people of St. Matthew's to continue to live into this vision of our common life, and especially when old ways of doing things no longer work. What sort of new future is God calling us into? What works? What are the gifts and passions of the people of St. Matthew's as well as the populations we feel God calling us to work with? What must we give up and what will we gain by being vulnerable and open to the new possibilities God is bringing forth?

Dan Johnson is a well known St. Matthew's parishioner - he serves on the healing prayer team and frequently teaches in the Sunday morning Faith Forum in the library.  As the Executive Director of the Christos Center for Spiritual Formation, he oversees a vital organization that seeks to practice and teach contemplative spirituality by offering a variety of workshops and group learning opportunities. 

• As the Executive Director of Christos Center, you spend a lot of time with spiritual practices. Which practices are most important for you? Three that stand out for me are Silence, Dwelling in the Word, and Hospitality. Before experiencing silence as a spiritual practice, I had seen it used to shame and punish. Think about how we can give someone the "silent treatment." So it was a pleasant surprise to find the positive side of silence. It actually makes room for deeper thought and greater intuitive sensitivity. Once I've settled into the quiet, it feels like my ego has faded and I am in a more honest and authentic frame of mind. I believe this is a good way to be open to the presence and movement of God's Spirit. Scripture was a big part of my religious background, so finding a fresh way to come at it as an adult was important. What I like about Dwelling is that it invites meditation and imagination, two gifts that have healing and creative qualities. That I can experience these gifts while reading stories of God and people that have been passed down over thousands of years is simply amazing. Practicing hospitality is just what an introvert like me needs. The other two spiritual practices I've mentioned help me find the space and energy to authentically welcome others. Sometimes it's opening the door with a smile. Sometimes it's meeting a stranger and starting a conversation. Sometimes it's listening to an old friend share a great achievement or a most difficult experience.

• Christos Center offers a practice called "Spiritual Direction." For those unfamiliar with the practice, what does this mean and how does one benefit from it?  I should have added a fourth practice when I answered the first question! At its core, spiritual direction is helping another person notice God's presence in their life and develop that relationship further. This could include identifying patterns in one's spiritual life, clarifying an experience that convinces us God is near, or finding ways to get "unstuck." It could be beginning or developing spiritual practices that connect us with something much larger than ourselves.  Classically, spiritual direction is practiced by getting together with another person and talking about what is happening in our relationship with God. The spiritual director is trained in how to listen well and assist in identifying God's movement in one's stories. Spending an hour a month listening deeply with this kind of person helps us see what is going on in our other practices and gain confidence in God's presence throughout our lives. When we participate in a prayerful dialogue with this kind of person, we become more aware of the significance of God's interactions with us. As we become more aware of God's movement in our lives, our trust grows and our relationship with God becomes the basis for how we live our lives.

• Can you give us a short example of "deep listening?" What does it look like (or feel like)?  Listening is about paying attention to what someone else is saying. There is a process to listening deeply. We hear so many things each moment, we typically employ an automatic sorting process, what is interesting to me or what is not. If we suspend automatic sorting for a while we move into a discovery mode of listening. We hear something new and now have the mindset to explore it further. As we listen even deeper, an empathy develops and we can honestly sense a mutual respect for the other person and what they are saying. This provides the opportunity to "hear" on an intuitive level, noticing subtle movements and seeing new possibilities emerge. Being heard at this level is a great gift. 
• If they were interested, how would someone go about finding a spiritual director?  There are a number of good places to find a spiritual director.... Read More Here  

By John Lawyer

 

Meeting twice monthly over the past year, we used Joan Chittister's book The Gift of Years (available in the Church Library) as the center of our discussions.  Sr. Joan is a Benedictine nun, has written and spoken widely on a variety of topics and turns a mean phrase:  "Retirement is the counterculture of the culture. It says that just being alive and learning to live well is sign in itself to the rest of humanity of the quintessential goodness of life." (p. 114).  She gives us some 40 short essays on such topics as Regret, Success, Letting Go, Accomplishment, and Loneliness.  We highly recommend her to anyone of any age interested in more fully living their life.  We often found that the ideas we discussed in the Church Library on Wednesday afternoon blossomed with fresh insights into our own lives during the following week.  

• Autonomy.  Loss of control over one's life, of flexibility in one's options, is a big issue, but it can be adjusted to on better terms than simple surrender.  As Sr. Joan constantly points out each factor of aging is Janus-faced.  We found one of the best parts of her book is that she ends each essay with a paragraph on "The burden of . . . "and "The blessing of . . . " the same factor.  Each aspect of aging can be a burden or a blessing, and the choice is ours to a larger degree that we often want to realize.  Going with the blessing will usually mean work while sinking beneath the burden is always easier, and has the further advantage of allowing us to nibble the subtle crumbs of self- pity, for which it must be admitted we all have a taste

• From doing to being.  Part of the joy of age is being able to lay down many of our external burdens.  No more meetings to go to, emails to answer, problems to solve, ladders to climb.  We have probably already accomplished most of what we are going to accomplish in terms of outside activities, attended with whatever degree of success we managed to achieve.  Now is the time to let that go; hopefully with some satisfaction, or perhaps more with relief.  Who we are, who we have become, who we are yet growing into, is the pressing task, more important that what we do. 

• Experience.  When you have seen six or seven decades of life you can greet the remaining few years with a certain equanimity. Perhaps we have not indeed "seen it all," but we have seen enough to know that the sun will probably still come up tomorrow morning more or less as usual; that difficulties will arise, yes, but so will solutions or at least outcomes; that love endures, but self-centeredness blocks our grasp of reality. 
• Grieving losses.  Perhaps the most important skill seniors need is the ability to let go gracefully, to grieve their losses well, and continue to move forward.  Loss of control over important elements of one's life is an important issue, and to a greater or lesser extent inevitable.  As with other life skills, you need not wait until you are old to start learning this; pets die, children grow up and move away, perhaps a marriage ends.  Riding the waves without totally losing one's balance becomes essential.   We need to learn how to give up gracefully that which we can no longer hold on to in any event, to acknowledge and grieve our losses as they occur rather than letting the sorrow pile up inside us. ....  Read More Here