Clergy in this new world are not Bible experts or people that know God in perfect ways.  Instead clergy are to be the people who can tell stories, engage the imagination, ask us to think beyond ourselves, to help us engage the divine mystery.  These are the people the church must now train, not the preservers of scripture, but the "mid-wives of culture"(1) to whom we will look to help us dream a new world.  That is why the message of Christ creating a new kingdom on earth is a great image for Christianity to embrace, and I encourage other faiths to look to what images they will use to embrace this new change.

1-Dr. Vincent Harding in a lecture to "Christianity in the Modern World" Iliff School of Theology Fall 2008

The place of the Church in the culture

"Rethink Church" the new marketing slogan for the United Methodist Church.  The young people of the church hope it is not just a slogan and not just rethinking.  We hope that it is re-creating the church.  For the church has more to offer the world now at a time that we need peacemakers, community builders, and we need miracle workeres.  Young people and the next generation of leadership, young and old, are calling on the church to make a change.  Get out into the community and provide the catalyst to change our world for the better.  For it is through us that the kingdom is made possible.  

Grace and Enthusiastic Peace

Where is God today?

God my God, where are you today?

Are you in the mountain, or in the valley?

With the poor, or rich?

Hidden in the corridors of power, or in the homes of the powerless?

As I look to find you I see where you have been.  

Changing peoples hearts to care for the world.

How do I catch up with you?

To really spend time with you?

Instead of just seeing where you have been.

I am a young person, and I pray that I may have a moment with you.

Can you please set some time aside?

So that I may walk beside

and know you more.

Psalm 152

By The Psalmist Amundson aka Tanpants

Hashem we have heard of the magical signal the brought instant knowledge

The signal you gave to our fore-bearers, aka us here in this class last week

A divine spark that you demonstrated to the people

A sign that you had truly blessed us

We search for this signal

Oh Hashem my god bring back magically the signal

Make us wise once more

For it is through the corporate thought of endless electronic signals that we find peace

We find contact outside of this one place in which or bodies are trapped to be most affirming to our small lives

To think that we may not be able to change our mood online, leaves us trapped in this sense of melancholy

What must we do to prove our worth of the magic wireless?

Must we grovel to the IT lords, or will you bring it back on your own.

For we truly would rather find peace in your name then in an email from IT.

Oh wireless come back, Oh Hashem connect us again.

To Travel Beyond

For when we landed a man on the moon we dazzled at our own brilliance

All at once we forgot the cradle where we had come from

That God created a world full of life for us to be a part of

Yes there is a joy to travel beyond, but that we care for it as our home

Thankful

As we consider a season in which we have a life of plenty.  It is a time we remember that plenty is not something had by all at anytime in history.  This holiday season we must ask ourselves if we truly have dreamed big enough to think of a world where all have plenty.  The possibility of a world where people feel they can make the best of what they are given is long overdue.  It is my hope that you can share a dream of a better world sometime during this holiday season.  Realize it is the only way that we can hope for a better tomorrow.  Dream big. 

A message

Amos 5:18-24 (NRSV)

¹⁸Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!
   Why do you want the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, not light;
¹⁹   as if someone fled from a lion,
   and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
   and was bitten by a snake.
²⁰Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
   and gloom with no brightness in it? 

²¹I hate, I despise your festivals,
   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²²Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
   I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
   I will not look upon.
²³Take away from me the noise of your songs;
   I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
²⁴But let justice roll down like waters,
   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 

 

A Message to the Church

To the church who is crying out in the wilderness, “Oh where are the young?”  

To a church that creates self worth around the amount of grey hair in the pew.  

To a church that says young people are of value 

and yet do not empower the disenfranchised voices of the world.  

You beg God that your institution, 

the one to which have dedicated your life, 

may not die. 

You beg for a new generation to see the beauty and love of God.  

I pray that you recognize what this next generation begs for:

The new generation is avoiding your pews not because they are too hard, 

but because their form has not been challenged.  

The words from your pulpit have instead made the pews soft, 

made the people comfortable, 

and made our God tame.  

Our God, Our Jesus, Our Spirit are not docile.  They are ALIVE and they are FREE.  

Young people want to live, 

they want to engage in the dialectic of the divine.  

The dialogue of how to change the world in which we live, 

to create a kingdom of God.

They want what YOU WANT

To live with the image of a new world

To experience a world that creates opportunity for ALL GOD’s PEOPLE