Archive for the ‘Service’ Category

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A Jumping Off Place

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

New Church theology holds many simply precious truths. One that struck me when I read it last week is the idea that salvation is “an ongoing act of creation.” Many see salvation as an act avoiding damnation. Salvation then is not about creating anything but far more about avoiding punishment.

But lets just think for a moment what that might mean to see salvation as a creative act – if that was our “jumping off place.”  Creation itself is about growth, reproduction, change, even adventure. Imagine those being the antonyms for “salvation”!

I feel in many ways my eyes opening wider and wider.  Now that is not about some grand pastoral insight – because we all know that is in short supply.  It is about eyes widening as I witness more and more people living into a church that is in itself a creative endeavor.  Just this week ….

Baseball: Angel gave Angela 3 Philly baseballs from the NLCS for me to give Brayden Walsh and his parents.  Brayden, as many of you are aware, is a young man battling some serious health issues.  Brayden’s comments to his mom, on receiving the gifts, was that he was never going to wash his hands again.  Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a a gift creation.

Roofs: Sam wanted to know the name of a pastor I referenced in a service, a pastor who moved from the Main Line to Kensington because that is where he felt could best use him.  Sam wants to get in touch with him so he can offer to repairs roofs for those in need for free.  Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a gift of creation.

Cleaning: Elizabeth would like to get a group together to help clean the office.  I am not sure how she knew it needed cleaning – alright actually I do know – because it is dirty.  Our office serves small groups, as well as a being our “home base” during the week.   So that helps all of us.  Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a gift of creation.

Tithing: From an online viewer in Canada, “We are committed to modeling a tithe and beyond….The Vision of sharing these beautiful truths through meaningful contacts with a world that so desperately needs them is just as compelling as the day we signed on to help build a better distribution network to share these precious truths with the world. With this in mind, we are committed to placing our modest gifts with those parts of our worldly organization dedicating themselves to expanding efforts to reach out to others.”   Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a gift creation.

So yes, salvation is an act of creation.  In our own way, lets be an act of creation as we join that wider project singing into our hearts.   What a great place to jump off from!

 

 

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The Singing Started at 5:45

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

The singing started at 5:45.  It went through the set up for the meal.  It lasted as we served the guests – a group of homeless families and individuals in Pottstown. The singing ended as we broke for clean up.  I find myself singing, waiting for a woman in charge of salad to dole out a blob of Italian dressing onto the styrphome plate I held, a plate filed with lettuce and shaved carrots.  She sings too.   The plate from her, to me, to the guest.

That was last night.  Just one night.

The Adkins, Scott, Karl, Angela, Pat, Bryn, Tom. Others.  Other Pastors.  Other churches.  A mom, Penn State class of ’89. with two teen age sons.  She cried.  One person I did not net meet.

The instruction. Pastor Abu Bradley with his son and daughter in tow: “Lets pray.  These are guests.  Do not eat until they eat.  Clear their plates.  Ask them if they want seconds.  Children get served first.  Sit with guests.  Smile.  Free flu shots in the other room.  Who wants to watch the restrooms?  I want to make sure our guests even have a good experience there. Thank you.  Lets pray.”  A buffet line, serve-yourself, makes so much more sense but it doesn’t.  Life is not serve-yourself.

Heaven as the grand banquet to which all are invited.    Jordan, 7, loves the Steelers.  So do I.  Lynne worries about her son.  So do I.  ”We” – a bunch of “beautiful fools” – I love that line Ray.  There is grace in all things.

 

 

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Moving Beyond a Church of Personal Salvation and Traveling to Reading Pennsylvania

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

“The Church of Personal Salvation” represents the Siren song of religious endeavor.  The focus centers on the individual – on my view, my perspective, my need to “feel” spiritual.   Very easy to do and a trap I believe most if not all people interested in the spiritual journey can quickly fall into.  I certainly have on more than one occasion.

The religious experience can intoxicate.  It readily lifts us to heights of beauty and grandeur.  And there lies the temptation.  The mountaintop experience, in isolation, may well be important as a centering, a grounding, a moment of inspiration but it is NOT the Christian life.   If we fall prey to seeing the mountaintop experience as the Christian life we readily turn to a “Church of Personal Salvation.”  We will then search for churches that fill that self absorbed need to feel good versus churches that call all of us to do good.  From a Biblical perspective, this may well explain that just as the crowds form and grow, and adulation swells we find Jesus in the New Testament often simply moving along, going on His way.

Are you aware the poorest city in the entire country, as measured by the percentage of citizens living beneath the poverty line exists approximately an hour from where NewChurch LIVE is headquartered?   Read the article.  Reading Pennsylvania just surpassed Flint Michigan.

So the question, is who will hear a call?  How can we serve?  Are you the person who wants to organize a coat drive, food drive, dinner at a homeless shelter?   Maybe you are.  God needs us and He needs us to get it is not about us.   Show us the way!  chuck.blair@newchurchlive.tv

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A New Church View of Leadership

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

What kind of leadership should we exercise?

From a Christian New Church perspective it begins with a first-things-first approach.  That means a focus on service, plain and simple.  Leadership is not about self engradizement, self esteem, self discovery.  It instead centers on serving God through serving others.

As we step out in service and step into leadership roles as a way to accomplish that end what will we find over time?  Simply put – joy.  As the New Church theologian Emanuel Swedenborg phrased it, that joy grows from “shared experiences with others.”  As we serve into those service oriented “activities we love, our love for them grows, and along with that love comes wisdom about how to involve others.” (True Christianity pg. 192)  A little taste of heaven!

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How Do I Keep It Simple?

Friday, July 8th, 2011

From the book “True Christianity” Volume 2, pg. 23:

Friends, abstain from what is evil, and do what is good, and believe in the Lord with your whole heart and your whole soul; and He will give you love for what you do and faith in what you believe.

That is simple.  Often for me life chugs along and then I just hit patches where I feel unteathered, disconnected from God and other people. And at those time, a simple reminder of a simple truth brings me back to center.

What is powerful about this line from True Christianity is that it speaks of our need to follow the God of our understanding and how in doing that, God helps us to have faith (think “confidence”) in what we know and to have love at the core of what we do.  In other words, it is settling into our true selves.  Yes, there is a need there for an external form of revelation as it were – a rock “higher than I” as the New Testament would put it – to pull us out of our petty selves.  And, at the same time it focuses us back on our true selves in a healthy way – our informed perspective on the world, our enlightened view of God, our love.  Put your heart and soul into it and you get your heart and soul.


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Opportunity

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

We broke the current series – “212″ – into 4 sections.  The first was to look at Strengths and how they may be God’s way of pointing us to Purpose.  The second part of the series looked a simple concept – God guides us through the opportunities He gives to us.  The tasks then, listed, are the following.

  1. What are your Strengths?
  2. How might they point you to your God given Purpose?
  3. What are the Opportunities in front of you RIGHT NOW to exercise those Strengths as a way of furthering Purpose?

As a minister, we need to take our own medicine.  So I started listing all the opportunities in my life, right now, to exercise with humility God given strengths in a purposeful way.  The list was jaw dropping because it took a minute or two to notice that (a) the opportunities were endless and (b) I was only leveraging a small percentage of the ones open to me.

No small thing.  See there is heaven in that place.  From the book Heavenly Secrets: “Since angels … are in goodness from God, they desire nothing more than to perform useful services. These bring joy to their life … and happiness.”   The ah hah was simple and profound.  What God is saying is that through that joyous endeavor to reach out and serve in the areas open to us, life pours, and with that life comes joy and happiness.  Leaning into opportunity is more than getting ahead, more than building a resume.  It is actually life, heavenly life.

We may be limited in terms of the opportunities we have eyes to see.  That being said, the opportunities God gives us are limitless. Then maybe in some odd way we become, in God’s Grace, the Strength, the Purpose, the Opportunity.

Join us this Sunday in a full family service (no KidsLIVE) as we look at overcoming the obstacles that get in the way of us moving those opportunities forward.

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What Does NewChurch LIVE Look Like?

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Overview

Since our restructuring, what will NewChurch LIVE look like?  February 13th hopefully answered many of the questions.  For those fans of NewChurch LIVE, this blog entry describes what we are doing to continue building a thriving congregation.  Join us this weekend to check it out!

Message

Our focus on message remains the same.  In a fall survey, the NCL congregation was clear – message is our most important asset.  Our messages focus on relevance, in taking what we talk about on Sunday and having it be transportable into Monday.  To accomplish that task we first look at God’s Word and how it can answer the questions of the 21st century world.  We often use contemporary examples wrapped in culturally relevant imagery.  Our hope is that people will continue to leave feeling inspired.  (Video: How To Build A Sermon)

We are also likewise big believers in a teamwork approach.  Services involve upwards of 20 individuals who help with everything from ideation, to graphics, to sermon construction.    Individuals also often tell parts of their own story as part of the service, either in words or in music.

Music

We purposefully chose more contemporary music.  This is because our primary audience is the first time attender. Many of them are at best uncomfortable with “Christian Rock.”  We are a definitively Christian church – just a branch of Christianity more interested with the inclusionary claims of Jesus vs. the exclusionary claims made by some Christians today.  We seek to reach people where they are.  Secular music with a deeply spiritual message best conveys the message that “you are welcome here.”

KidsLIVE

Kids are very important to us as a congregation.  We seek to serve families.  Curtis Childs, aka “Mr. Curtis” does a wonderful job with this element our program.  Designed for those in the elementary grades, KidsLIVE seeks to convey the simple yet profound message of God’s presence in their lives.

We recently moved our KidsLIVE program from a separate building into the lobby of the Mitchell Performing Arts Center.  For those too young for KidsLIVE, we are opening the “Green Room” at the Mitchell Performing Arts Center (MPAC) during the service, a very comfortable space where families with young children can watch their children and the service at the same time.

Volunteering/ Service

These elements continue to be critical to NewChurch LIVE.  Approximately 40 individuals volunteer every Sunday at our Sunday worship environment.  Others help out during the week.  Many folks in addition serve on community service projects both local in the greater Philadelphia region.

Small Groups

Small Groups are frankly our biggest “win.”  If a person involves themselves in a small group they often find religion coming alive in new ways.  Our offerings rotate. For example right now, we are offering 2 Bible Study groups, 1 support group for working mom’s, and a bi-weekly program called “Strength” – a program for those with habits, hurts, and hangups (aka all of us!) who want to employ the 12 Steps of recovery to spiritual growth.

Online Presence

All our services are posted online via our homepage, Vimeo, and YouTube.   People can join a live chat on Facebook as well.  We also publish services via Podcasts for those who like to listen while walking!

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Emergent Christianity

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Emergent Christianity is a fascinating movement occurring in Christendom.  The name grows out of the belief that a re-focusing on the core of the Christian message “emerging.”  This emergence is not marked by sectarian or doctrinal divides but a by a deep agreement on what matters most.  Swedenborgian thought clearly saw this as key to Christianity as well as well as other denominations: “The Lord’s Church is not in this particular location or in that, but, it resides wherever people lead lives in keeping with the commandments.”

Listed below are several key components.  This movement is well attuned to New Church theology.

Less Appeal of Biblical Literalism:  This trend should be regarded as extremely favorable to the New Church.   Individuals moving from a literal-factual orientation to the Bible to an orientation that is far more comfortable seeing the Bible as historical-metaphorical. [1]

a.     In 1963, 65% of Americans reported believing in the literal letter of the Bible

b.     By 2001, only 21% reported the same.

Focus on here-and-now of service vs. then-and-there of salvation: More Christians appear to be focused on the here-and-now of transformative Christianity that calls them to a more hands-on relationship with God and others vs. an individual approach focused solely on Sunday church attendance and personal salvation.

a.     Don’t want body of belief but a way of salvation/ healing.   Not about set of propositions about ultimate reality but showing a way, a life that fixes the problems that they see.  Therefore about “living out” Christianity.

Christ as Model vs. Christ as Salvation:

a.     Christ as teacher, example, master and we are to be disciples.  Therefore imitate the example of Christ.

Increased interest in Spiritual Disciplines and Sacraments: In NCL this trend while anecdotal is very interesting.

a.     Large Interest in the broader culture around spiritual disciplines Yoga, Meditation, the study of Buddhism, books like “The Secret” etc…

b.     Clear interest in the sacraments of Marriage and Baptism

c.      Clear interest in the spiritual disciplines of Meditation and the 12 Steps as measured by our two most successful small group programs

As these concepts gain mainstream acceptance, it should be a fun decade ahead!

[1] Borg, Marcus J. “The Heart of Christianity”, Harpers, 2003

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Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

This morning in getting ready for Church, I am sitting in my office thinking about what does it really take to get ready for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, in this denomination, is the very core of worship.  Why is that?  I think the process is two fold – a first step – awareness of what we have – followed by a second step – awareness of what we have to give.  That is something to come open to.  What is that you have …. to give.

Because we all do, we all harbor this “thing” that was the point of God creating us.  Often largely unknown, ignored, or unlived in this life it still stirs.   When we take moments to worship in the spirit of thanks and gratitude for the blessing, we can feel its gentle presence.  Why?  As Emanuel Swedenborg phrased it, “Because the divine nature intimately affects everything with good and with blessedness.”  (Heaven and Hell)

Last night I was able to witness one of those moments.  I was privileged to preside at a 50th Wedding Anniversary/ Renewal of vows. To watch Mary Ellen and Paul socializing after the service, “working the crowd” with obvious joy and gratitude for the gold that was their life, was to watch a prayer of Thanksgiving literally unfold on a beautiful night at Pen Ryn.  They are living in what they have and in what they have to give – to each other, to their family, to their community.

So getting ready this morning is about clarity – clarity about a very simple, very profound message.  What we have is nice.  What we have to give is the point.


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We Do Care

Friday, November 19th, 2010

We do care.  People tend to have a deeply seeded sense of love and compassion.  Deep within, all of us – ALL of us -  lies a divine spark, a God given piece that remains with us through all eternity.  That piece reflects God – a God that, “… has compassion on everybody, loves everyone, and wishes to make everyone eternally happy.” (Heavenly Secrets, # 904).

Aligning our lives with that love is where challenges arise.  Likewise, when we do it, it is where life most breaks open.  I most enjoyed a TED talk by Jessica Jackley as she spoke about her journey from the Sunday School lessons of taking care of the poor to something far deeper – organized steps to do that in a way that aligned love and money.  She definitely lives that “spark”!

What she learned in the process of organizing her non-profit, Kiva, is that we do care and we do love.  Fear keeps many of us from always living into that care and love – fear of failure, fear of doing it wrong, fear of being taken advantage of.  What moves us through that fear are stories.

Stories – a point so true.  We thrive on stories.  As Rachel Naomi Remen noted in an NPR interview – at times we need them more than food.  Watching God settle into peoples’ souls, including mine, is known by story.  There is no other experience of it, no other communication of it.  And those stories move us beyond fear.  The fact is there are mechanics of growing a church, a church focused on service.  There are budgets, perspectives that at times challenge, projections not met, personality clashes – aka “the mess” that is life.  And there are the stories.  Stories upon story that speaks to the need to reach out, to connect, to find meaning.  The best of those are the ones that pull us in and then push us out.

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