Reflections

The Mission Committee met Tuesday night for the first time since I was called to be your Vicar. It was an informal give and take conversation about a variety of matters. I promised to be a bit more structured in the future.

Worth reporting:

I announced that Bishop Seage would like to assign a Deacon-in-Training to Nativity. We would serve as a field work site for one who is preparing to be ordained next year. More details will follow with the bishop’s official announcement next month.

Lots of conversation about the Christmas service schedule. A decision was made to have a Christmas Eve celebration in the early evening with lots of candles! Since Christmas Day falls on a Sunday there was considerable discussion about whether there should also be a Christmas Day service. No decision was made. Stay tuned!

Discussions about an access ramp and hot water in the sacristy got serious. I also proposed adding water that has been blessed to the baptismal font. More about that later.

On a different kind of matter I asked each Committee member to talk about what attracts them to Nativity; what is it that gets them out of bed on a beautiful Sunday morning to be a part of something that so much of contemporary culture says is, at best, irrelevant, and at worst, dangerous? It’s a question that is worth asking ourselves on a regular basis because it may open us to an encounter with God that we might not be expecting. I believe that those nudges to gather together, that we tend to think are generated by our own volition, are actually rooted in God’s love and purpose for our lives.

Richard Rohr writes about how the church is meant to be a laboratory of formation that shapes us with a radically different ethic of love and justice, so that we can go into the world as salt and leaven and instruments of cultural transformation. Unfortunately, he writes, more often than not, we are actually shaped and formed by the values of the culture, (individualism, consumerism, etc.). Then we go to church and begin, often unconsciously, to water down those radical values of Jesus and lose our capacity and desire for transformation.

Didn’t know it was that complicated, did you?

Two things that weren’t mentioned:

There will be a small camera crew in church on Sunday as part of a documentary being done on Sean Kirkpatrick’s band.

Plans are now being made to produce a “refreshment station” at the church during the Watermelon Festival. See James McCormick if you are willing to help.

See you Sunday!

Peace,

Duncan