ThanksWords. ThanksActions. Thanksgiving.

Dear Friends,

As this Thanksgiving week opens, it is likely that the attention of people around here and around the country is divided between whatever you do to earn your living and last-minute thoughts and plans for Thursday's gathering  - hopefully with family and friends - to celebrate our national day of Thanksgiving.  And that is okay.  We likely learned as children that anticipation is at least as important as an event in itself.  And if we didn't learn it as children, we may have been instructed on the same point at some point by the Rolling Stones!

In our madcap-paced society, it really behooves us to make the attempt - whether sometime this week or throughout the coming blessed (and so overlooked) season of Advent - to radically slow down physically, emotionally, spiritually and to consider what are those blessings for which we are truly thankful.  Gratitude is a revelation to our deep hearts of what our world - both the greater one and our own personal part of it - actually looks like.  Gratitude is one of the healthiest reality checks we have been given.  Don't let it slip by.

I have been considering what are some of the people, things, events, memories and hopes for which I am most grateful - particularly writing from this office at the Mercer School of Theology.  I have been trying to push the envelope on gratitude this year.  That is, to both round up the usual suspects and push myself to delve deeper into good reason for thanks.  So here is a very partial list.  I would invite you to add your own.

Thank you, good God, for . . .

family - a first and lasting blessing, from generation to generation;
for fellow workers in the work of this school, and in the diocese of Long Island in all its congregations;
for friendships, both those which have endured for decades and those being planted today;
for the Word of the Gospel, which constantly reveals the gentle power to give and to renew life, to revise perspective and expectation;
for this beloved nation, crazed in these days in its maddening and confusing current culture, yet filled with great good hearts, people of love and hope;
for the right to free speech, although the exercise of it often reveals first the crazy-making current culture referenced just above (!);
for the invitation to delve together ever more deeply into contemplation of you, dear God, in prayer and thought;
for the reality of the godly worship that takes place daily, and certainly weekly, throughout this world;
for those who gather bodily at that worship, for those who are joined to those gatherings at heart, and for those who would be there but for obstructions remaining painfully from the past;
for hope in a future unseen, untested, but filled surely with the living Spirit of Jesus Christ;
for possibility;
for mercy;
for light;
for grace;
for the oft-revealed ultimate deep openness of the human heart.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  Thank you for your past and present interest in the work of Mercer School.  Do check out our coming events on our homepage (www.mercerschool.org) and register to come visit.  And if there's planning for the future you'd like to have us undertake, be in touch! We'll do it together.  That's the best way to do anything at all.

With gratitude,
John+

PS - sometimes what we need and that for which we're grateful is quite simple - like "a stone to roll."  Take a listen.

A question on the train

 

The other day I was returning to Garden City after a visit to Brooklyn on the Hempstead line of the Long Island Railroad.  After the iPhone ran out of juice, I was blessedly compelled to pay attention (as I want to do anyway!) to my actual, rather than virtual, surroundings.  At the end of the car was an advertisement from a business magazine that included this question, "Is your business capturing the new consumer imagination?"

 

Now I have the disease that hears all questions and assesses all statements in terms of the state of the church, especially at the fundamental level of the parish congregation.  So I read this question and began to muse.

 

First of all there is the weighty (or not) matter of effective translation.  The church is not a business, though there are things we should (and hopefully do) learn from the business way of being.  To give but one example, a responsive healthy business is responsive precisely to the people whom it is trying to either reach or to retain as customers.  As a church, how effectively responsive are we on the 'inside' to the folks around us who know little about the church, or who mistrust the church, or who have had a bad experience of church in the past?  How open are we to seeing, hearing, engaging these people (who are sometimes known as the majority of people!)?  So, although we are not running a business, there are things we can learn there.

The question on the train asks us if we are in tune with "the new consumer."  There are indeed not a few folks in the church who may rightly be called consumers in the way they relate to their parish.  (See Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter, Introduction and Chapter 1, by Michael White and Tom Corcoran, published 2013).  In church terms, that's not a good thing either to be or to be called.  Rather we are called to make and to be disciples.  A consumer consumes, chews up and spits out.  A disciple commits, learns, remains, and serves.

But, to go on with translation, is there a 'new consumer' in the church?  That is to say: is there a new 21st century person who needs to be approached differently in order to be invited well to consider the life of a disciple?  Are there ways we have connected with people in the past as church that are less likely to be successful now, or even advisable?  I think there are.  Is there openness among us who are already church members to be open to new ways to get to know, to approach, to accept new possible disciples?  There had better be such an openness, for the sake of the present, the future, the church, the person to whom we are speaking, and the mission.  All these benefit when we connect where people are, in the way they are accustomed to doing so.

And the final word of the question, the best word there of all: "imagination."  The new consumer, the 21st century man and woman on the street, on the web, and not in the pew, the potential disciple, can only be reached by a people of imagination, a people ready to imagine previously unseen ways of speaking the Good News, of being the church, and of inviting to discipleship.

How alive is my imagination?  Is it likely to have a walk-on role on "The Walking Dead"?  How lively is your imagination?  Perhaps the first thing we need do in answer to the question on the train is to loosen the reins and allow imagination some blessed freedom.

_______________________________________________

 

Mercer’s new Vision Wall of art’s first exhibit, “Living Ubuntu,” featuring photos by the Reverend Wilfredo Benitez is ending this month. We will be sharing news soon about the new exhibit. The photos of “Living Ubuntu” are available for purchase at $125.00, all of which benefits Mercer School programming. Just come by the Mercer offices if you are interested. We are grateful to Father Benitez for helping us transform a blank wall to something much richer and beautiful.

Note the new section of the Mercer website (www.mercerschool.org called “Safe Church.” Here, fully revised and new guidelines will be made available to you after Diocesan Convention has concluded on November 16th.  These will be must reading for all parish leaders and for everyone committed to a Church in which all, including the most vulnerable among us, are safe and valued.

All of the above, and everything on this site, on our Facebook page and on our Twitter feed is meant to say this: we are a service organization here at Mercer. We serve you so that you can better serve where you are? What is your call to service? And how can we help?

 

Blessings,

John McGinty+

Dean

November 2013 @ Mercer

Dear Friends, 

Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

Around these parts the month of November is notable in at least two ways: the Diocese of Long Island’s annual Convention takes place (this year on the 15th and 16th), and we all pause for a day of Thanksgiving. At Convention, Mercer School will have a display table. If you are present as a delegate or visitor, please stop by and say hello. Among other things, you’ll be able to get information there about second semester offerings and plans for Mercer’s future. You’ll be able to learn about upcoming revisions to our Safe Church Training and the renewal of anti-racism training in our Racism Awareness Program. We will also be sharing a new brochure about the vocational diaconate, asking whether that might in fact be your call.

Prior to Convention, our Preaching the Lectionary series continues on Wednesday, November 13th. We are delighted to welcome Professor C. Clifton Black of Princeton Theological Seminary who will lead us in considering the preaching task for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany this year. We continue this series in happy collaboration with our brothers and sisters of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Again, registration online is available through the Upcoming Events Mercer calendar. There is still space. If you are a preacher, do yourself a favor for the upcoming seasons and register to join us on November 13th. 

Mercer’s new Vision Wall of art’s first exhibit, “Living Ubuntu,” featuring photos by the Reverend Wilfredo Benitez is ending this month. We will be sharing news soon about the new exhibit. The photos of “Living Ubuntu” are available for purchase at $125.00, all of which benefits Mercer School programming. Just come by the Mercer offices if you are interested. We are grateful to Father Benitez for helping us transform a blank wall to something much richer and beautiful.

Note the new section of the Mercer website called “Safe Church.” Here, fully revised and new guidelines will be made available to you after Convention has concluded. These will be must reading for all parish leaders and for everyone committed to a Church in which all, including the most vulnerable among us, are safe and valued.

All of the above, and everything on this site, on our Facebook page and on our Twitter feed is meant to say this: we are a service organization here at Mercer. We serve you so that you can better serve where you are? What is your call to service? And how can we help?

Finally, all the best to our alumni, students, instructors, families and all the people of the diocese for a happy celebration of all we have been given, on Thanksgiving Day! 

Sincerely in Christ,

John McGinty+