Shane will be speaking in Albany June 22 and 23, and I look forward to our Westminster youth hearing from such a compelling Christian.
What would you say to a future church?
| Shane will be speaking in Albany June 22 and 23, and I look forward to our Westminster youth hearing from such a compelling Christian. What would you say to a future church? Add Comment Last week, the young adults of Westminster got out of the church building and worked in a vacant lot in the South End of Albany. We hope this will be the beginning of many more opportunities to partner with our neighbors. "God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them." Genesis 1:27 (CEB) All of these people are made in the image of God. All means all! Pray over these faces, over the places they are from and the lives they lead. Pray for the people around you as you read this. Pray for yourself and the eyes to see the image of God in everyone you meet. While the Occupy Movement may not be in the national spotlight these days, the movement continues. A new initiative underway may not be what you think of as radical social upheaval. A group within Occupy Albany is mobilizing significant momentum for urban farming. You may be wondering what the Occupy Movement has to do with the labor-intensive, patience-demanding work of farming. Aren't these people about yelling in the streets and trespassing in parks? When did they become so pedestrian? Local farming is a catalyst for diverse social change. If you don't believe me, ask Michael Pollan. He comes at the issue from a different framework than the Occupy Movement, but they end up in the same place. He cites that during the 1940s Victory Garden movement, 40% of produce consumed in the US was grown in home gardens. People in their backyards or neighborhood parks shared the work to produce enough food to share. If that's not good news for the 99% I don't know what is. If you would like to get involved in Occupy Albany's gardening initiative, please let me know. An organizing meeting will take place in the next few weeks. I moved to Albany about a year and a half ago. Since I came here, I have made an effort to get to know the people who live in our near neighborhood. Of all the neighborhoods in the Capital Region, the few blocks that surround our church are the most quickly changing, the most alive day and night and the most concentrated during the workday. The fun part of my job is dreaming up ways to reach out to all these different groups of people in a meaningful way. What needs do people working downtown have? How can we connect with the young students and professionals who live in these blocks? There is no single program that will reach them all. Nevertheless, in Lent we are trying something new to reach out to our neighborhood. A few years ago, I visited the Danish capital, Copenhagen. In the height of Northern European winter, the Cathedral is open three nights a week. They call it Night Church. On the night we attended, an artist had created an installation of images and pathways weaving through the aisles and small side chapels. Hundreds of young people wandered in and out of the building as a choir of a dozen sang soothing tones that echoed in the massive sanctuary. We came away feeling we had truly encountered the Holy. Here at Westminster, we are attempting a Night Church of our own. Our version will have a mixture of silence and readings with music at 10-minute intervals. Worshipers will have the opportunity to visit interactive prayer spaces throughout the sanctuary or just sit quietly and pray. They can come for a few minutes or for the whole hour. Please join us in praying for this new endeavor. Pray for the people who wander by or who are looking for God in their lives. You are welcome to attend and see what it is all about. Who knows what will result from this experiment. As long as we are open to the movement of the Holy Spirit, we take this risk in faith. On Saturday, Albany Presbytery approved a statement from our Peacemaking Task Force in support of the Occupy Movement. Read the statement below. As someone who has been involved in Occupy Albany, I am very happy to see this coming from our church. The Occupy Movement is a legitimate public airing of grievances. It highlights the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans and calls to account those who have plunged our nation and the world into a desperate economic crisis. Trillions of taxpayer dollars have bailed out the wealthy while close to nothing has gone to cushion economic collapse for the poor and middle class. Millions of Americans are unemployed or under-employed. The US is faced with a massive permanent underclass that may never work again. As people of faith we acknowledge that we all bear a certain responsibility for the current economic condition, but all are not equally guilty. The grievances of the protesters include: lasting foreclosure relief, restoration of appropriate financial regulation, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in emphasis from protecting financial institutions, corporations and the wealthy to fostering equitable wages and lasting economic development. The Occupy Movement illuminates the socio-economic inequality that fuels so much injustice. In a nation which proudly claims, “Liberty and Justice for all…” it’s time to live up to our principles. We ask our elected leaders to give ear to the underlying messages of these protests and to find the courage to represent the interests of all Americans and not just those who, along with their business malfeasance, contribute generously to re-election campaigns. We endorse the work of the teaching elders, ruling elders, church members and Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations that are working actively in the local and national Occupy Movement. We encourage our congregations to support the Occupy Movement actively with prayer, finances and participation. I ran across this blog post from Emily Morgan, entitled A Letter to the Church about Young Adults and Worship. Many churches want to "get more young people" in church. Morgan considers this question from many angles, as a young adult and a churchgoer herself. A point that really sticks with me is the difference between ministry to young adults and ministry with young adults. A good friend of mine is pastor of Redemption Church in Pennsylvania, a new church start that intentionally reaches out to college students and young adults in Bucks County outside of Philadelphia. They have young adults at every level of leadership and are reaching new people all the time. They have so many young adults, in fact, that they are trying to reach out to older people. Instead of the typical question, "how do we get more young people?" they are asking, "how do we get older people to join our church?" A unique problem to have. I am reminded of churches that want to be more culturally diverse. How do we get more people who don't look like us to be a part of our community? Themes from Morgan's article can be applied to each of these situations. Now I'll p. What would you add? The Albany Occupation has been going for over 2 weeks now. I have gone by a few times since it started and am part of a working group on spiritual wholeness. Questions from outside the movement remain. What are their demands? Aren't they just angry unemployed hippies? How will they know when they have accomplished what they set out to do? The purpose and direction of these demonstrations has been clear to me from the beginning. This movement is a reaction, yes. But instead of asking when it will end, let us ask what this movement is beginning. No matter how clear the goals are, the most concrete change that the Occupy movement introduces is its process. Instead of having leaders decide on policy goals or "demands" behind closed doors before the demonstration begins, decisions are made as part of the demonstration. Anyone can participate. The Occupy movement embodies direct democracy. I hesitated to "vote" at the first General Assembly I attended. Don't they know I just walked in off the street? Do I have to join first? What I realized is that everyone else just walked in off the street too, and all our voices count equally. Wow. Presbyterians do not run meetings on a consensus model for a variety of reasons. For example, if someone doesn't like an idea, they may be reluctant to share their view if they know that one nay vote will block the entire proposition. On the flip side, the consensus model can also allow a discussion to be hijacked by a small minority who hold a meeting hostage in order to get their way. While consensus isn't always my favorite, there's no denying that the Occupy movement has made it look good. They are committed to conducting themselves in a way that reflects their goals no matter how complicated it makes the movement. They are committed to being leaderless and insist that no one person can speak for the movement. Some would call that practicing what you preach. The occupy movement continues to encourage me about the future of our country. Our democracy has slowly drifted away from direct participation and toward raising money. Now these small groups of people committed to listening and deciding together show us how it's done. I’ll just come right out and say it: Jesus made me do it. As an ordained minister, I proudly joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations one day last week. My clerical collar and cardboard sign about Jesus’ love for the poor brought a few stares, but mostly solidarity and support. I was high-fiving atheists and shouting “Amen” to fellow believers all day long. Several people asked what brought me out that day. It seems obvious to me but perhaps bears repeating. The God I follow has a habit of overturning structures of power we set up in this world. I see the thread through scripture from freeing slaves at the Exodus to confronting injustice in a prophetic voice and on into the New Testament. Mary praises God for “[filling] the hungry with good things, and [sending] the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:53 NRSV)  The way Jesus himself lived made a lot of people uncomfortable. He spent time with sinners of all stripes, threw moneychangers out of the temple and refused to resort to violence to save his own life. He also taught that the last will be first and the first will be last. With this firm grounding in faith, I have been doing a lot of praying during this recession. Through my ministry, I know many people who are unemployed and underemployed, who sleep on the street or who struggle at the end of every month. While we work to feed the increasing numbers of hungry in the Capital Region, I have watched as economic inequality has increased rather than decreased. My prayers have not gone unanswered. Jesus always had a way of picking out that one person who was excluded. He gravitated to them with compassion, bringing them out from the margins into plain view. I occupied Wall Street and will occupy Albany in order to bring the excluded into plain view. This movement highlights the fact that economic inequality has led to power inequality. Everything I know about who God is compels me to stand on the side of the least, the last and the lost. I am by no means unique in my Christian progressive actions. In this movement and in history, there is a rich tradition of standing beside the poor because Jesus said so. And that’s my reason too - the reason I live in hope for the dawning of a new day. Yesterday after church, our young adult group got together for lunch. While we were chewing on potato salad and crackers, the conversation gravitated to why other people our age don't go to church or understand why we do. We kept coming back to one simple fact: Young adults are just not joiners. We talked about organizations like the Elks Club and how people used to be faithful members for life. That's just not the way we do things now. In our conversation over lunch, we tried to figure out why people in our generation are not joiners. Are there too many things we want to be involved in? Are we too lazy? Have we been in organizations in the past that have taken over our time? How are we so busy and so under-committed at the same time? I have noticed these trends in myself. I have been looking for a dance class to go to. But since I have so many evening meetings at church, I cannot commit to one single class for an 11 week term. So, I go week to week, stopping in when I get the chance. Ours is the generation that coined the term "meh." Wiktionary defines meh: "(slang) Expressing indifference or lack of enthusiasm." It was popularized in The Simpsons. I can't help but wonder what the church can learn from a bunch of non-joiners. This is hard for me since I'm part of the institutional church and do not see church the way outsiders may see it. What is the church equivalent of dropping in to a dance class whenever I have the time? What do non-joiners want to hear from God? I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments section. |  Frances Wattman Rosenau
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