Ash Wednesday Pastoral Prayer

  By emily | February 13, 2013 - 7:06 pm | ,
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Have mercy on us, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blog out our transgressions.
For we have both acted justly and unjustly, spoken carefully and uncarefully, listened with empathy and not listened at all.
You desire justice and righteousness to cascade like waterfalls; You desire wholeness and connectedness.
For the times when we have been too harsh on ourselves or others, forgive us.
For the times when we have been too easy on ourselves or others, forgive us.
For the times we have taken our frustration or anger out on others, forgive us.
For the times we have bottled our emotions up, forgive us.
For the times when we have not taken another’s frustrations or emotions seriously, forgive us.
For the times when we have written off those who are not like us, forgive us.
For the times we chose not to or forgot to take care of ourselves, forgive us.
For the times we let something important slip through the cracks, forgive us.
For the times we forget to find joy and laughter, forgive us.
For the times we have excluded someone, forgive us.
For the times we judged others and ourselves, forgive us.
For the angry words said in frustrating situations, forgive us.
For the times when our thoughts turn to hate, forgive us.
For all that weighs on our hearts and keeps us from you, forgive us.

Gracious God, we remember those who have died this past year.
We remember the personal losses of friends, family members, colleagues, and chosen family.
We remember those killed in school shootings.
We remember those killed in other shootings.
We remember Trayvon Martin.
We remember those who died and those whose lives were destroyed in Hurricane Sandy.
We remember those killed in wars and violence around the world.
We remember those killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon.
We remember civilians all over the world caught in the crossfire.
We remember those who are victims and survivors of domestic abuse.
We remember those who carry physical, emotional, and spiritual scars from abuse.
We remember those who feel as though they’ve lost hope.
We remember those struggling with mental illness.
We remember those who are unemployed and under employed.
We remember those who are struggling under heavy debt.
We remember those who are working and yet can’t seem to make ends meet.
We remember those struggling with addiction.
We remember those who feel stuck in cycles of poverty or violence or abuse or addiction.
We remember those who struggle with hunger.
We remember those who are not insured or have no access to health care.
We remember those who are homeless and refugees.
We remember those incarcerated & their families.
We remember those who are isolated because of age or disability.
We remember those who cannot remember themselves.
We remember those children and youth whose dreams have been crushed by forces beyond their control.
We remember those who suffer from long-term illness.
We remember those who are care-givers.
We remember those who have been told their creativity and imagination is useless or pointless.
We remember those who struggle to find purpose and meaning.
We remember those who are burnt out in caring professions.
We remember those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
We remember those who struggle under the expectations of others.
We remember those who have had to make difficult, life-changing decisions.
We remember those who cannot marry the person they are in love with.
We remember those forced out of their homes after coming out.
We remember those who fight to change the systems of racism in our communities and in the world.
We remember those who fight to change the systems of sexism in our communities and in our world.
We remember those who fight to change the systems of heteronormativity in our communities and in our world.
We remember those who fight against the systems of ageism in our communities and in our world.
We remember those who educate and advocate.
We remember those who have been burned by organized religion.
We remember those who feel distanced from God because of their experiences within the Church.

Holy God, we remember.
We remember & will not allow ourselves to be distracted from working toward Your justice and righteousness for all people.
We remember not simply to remember but also to remind us of our mission within the world.
We are the Body of Christ for the world.
We go forward to help and heal, work and rest, sing and pray, love and comfort.
We go forward knowing the Holy Spirit empowers us to repent & work together for a more just world.
In the name of Jesus we pray, amen.

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Advent 1: A Prayer for Hope

  By emily | December 4, 2012 - 7:37 pm | , , , , , ,
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Dream PC(USA) this Advent will offer prayers for each week during Advent and also for Christmas. This Prayer for Hope was written by Emily Hope Morgan, one of the co-facilitators, and is based on John 1:5.

A Prayer for Hope

Illuminating God,
We see the days growing shorter and the darkness creeping in longer and longer.
Yet we read in the Gospel of John, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
One candle is shining on the Advent wreath.
We wait for the others to be lit.
We hold that one shining candle in our hearts,
Hoping, trusting, faith-ing in the Light of the World.
Shine in our hearts during this Advent, Holy One,
That as we prepare our homes for Christmas we also prepare our lives for Christ,
Who is the Light of the World.
The darkness cannot overcome this Light.
We hold the Light in our hearts.
Trusting this Light will always be with us,
Empowering us, comforting us, challenging us,
So that we may continue to grow in hope.
We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ
And in the power of the Holy Spirit,
Amen.Advent Wreath 1 Lit

The Difficulty of Dreaming

  By emily | September 19, 2012 - 10:15 pm |
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Emily MorganThis post was written by Emily Hope Morgan, co-faciliator of Dream PC(USA), seminary student, and blogger at Fight the Bees.

What would you ask if God appeared to you in a dream? What kind of dreams would you dream if you weren’t afraid of failing? How can we make our dreams reality?

There is a beauty and difficulty to dreaming. We can ignore our dreams. We can silence them. We can joke about them. We can forget them. We can fear them. Sometimes we let dreams slip away.

Sometimes we wake up and can’t move because of a powerful dream, but then later in the day can’t recall the detials of the dream.

Sometimes we’re paralyzed because a dream has told us something about our reality that shakes us up.

Or we can have the guts to say what we actually think both in our dreams and take action in our lives. Does that sound familiar?

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.’ And Solomon said, ‘You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’ It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. (1 Kings 3:5-10)

I am asking our community to hold Dream PC(USA), the co-facilirators, and the Dreamer Fellowship groups in prayer. So many dreams have been expressed in the past few months. Wonderful dreams. Terrifyingly big changes kind of dreams. Ordinary dreams. Questioning dreams.

Tomorrow (Thursday, September 20th) Dream PC(USA) will meet at 9:30pm EDT on Twitter to pray. (You can follow along here if you don’t have a Twitter account.) Also tomorrow the people who have asked to be part of a Dreamer Fellowship group will be receving an e-mail with their group assignments.

Tomorrow is a big step for us. It is difficult to continue dreaming, and that is what we are striving to do. I invite those who have not liked our Facebook page or followed us to Twitter to do so. Also, a large amount of dreams have been complied over in the comments section of our Unbound article. They’re worth checking out.

Like Solomon we ask God for wisdom about how to proceed in our lives. If you’d like to be part of the Dreamer Fellowship groups you can find more information here. Keep dreaming! Send us articles you’d like to post on this blog. Comment on the Unbound article. Tweet at us. Start a dream journal. Whatever!

KEEP DREAMING.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Nashville

  By emily | August 20, 2012 - 12:50 pm | , , ,
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Photo courtesy dpchurch.com

This article was written by Rev. Ken Locke. Ken has been pastor of The Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville since October 1, 2002.  He enjoys the vitality and challenges an urban parish brings. Follow Downtown Pres on Twitter @DPCNashville

 

Several years ago I was driving around downtown Nashville and saw a billboard advertizing a local church as the church “Where God is praised in Downtown Nashville.”  That got me to thinking about my own congregation. What would people say about us?  What are we doing at The Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville?  What could serve as our unofficial motto or elevator pitch?  Could we brag about having the biggest organ in town? Should we draw attention to the Egyptian Revival style in which our building was built?  Perhaps longevity should be our pitch: “Praising God since 1816″.

Then I thought about my congregation’s passion for the gospel that leads them to drive in from the suburbs every week to worship God.  I thought about their involvement in feeding Nashville’s homeless and urban poor every Wednesday at lunch and every Sunday at breakfast (over 20,000 meals served in 2011).  The many agencies we support as mission partners and the drives for food and clothing and school supplies we host also came to mind.  Then I thought about our commitment to the arts and how using art in worship regularly challenges us and helps us know God better.

Somewhere along the way everything clicked into place.  We are the church “Where Passion Meets Action In Downtown Nashville.”  “Where Passion Meets Action In Downtown Nashville.”  It stuck and I liked it.  Without passion there is no action.  Without action, passion is directionless.  The gospel necessarily elicits, and demands, both.  Passion and action are the two strands of a church’s DNA.  Neither is more important than the other but without both no church is truly alive.

Now that motto is on our bulletin cover every Sunday and every Sunday I invite all visitors who have a passion for the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to come back and join their passion with ours so that together we may do wonderful action for the Kingdom of God.

And my dream is that one day no one will think of us as that downtown church with the crazy Egyptian Revival architecture.  Instead, they will think of us as that church WHERE PASSION MEETS ACTION IN DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE.

Dreamer Fellowships

  By angie | August 10, 2012 - 8:00 am | , ,
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“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

Summer is fading and fall is approaching. For many this means that the different pace of summer is winding down and fall is revving up. Maybe you spent your summer traveling from one place to another. Maybe you spent it dealing with administrative tasks. Maybe you spent it in transition. But it is safe to say that many of us spent this summer dreaming. After a GA that left us with more questions than answers and more fear than hope, we began to look for something more and so DreamPCUSA was formed. But the tricky thing about dreams is that if we don’t act on them, they just become these nebulous ideas locked in our minds.

Fall is approaching, and that means we are jumping back into the rhythm of things. New ministries starting up. Committee meetings every month. Daily phone calls and emails to return. We can easily get lost in the day to day urgent tasks of ministry, not allowing time to dream or envision a different way of doing things.

This is where you come in! Part of dreaming and DreamPCUSA is about dreaming together. There are many opportunities to do that through social media: Twitter, Facebook, Storify. But nothing compares to face to face, local interaction. One of our dreams is that fellow dreamers would create Dreamer Fellowships in their communities. This could be with your presbytery, within your region, in your own church. We don’t know what that will look like for everyone, but we would love to see fellow dreamers to step out and lead a fellowship within their community. To make dreams become realities within their own communities and churches.

To find out more on how to do this or how to lead a Dreamer Fellowship, check out our ,Dreamer Fellowship tab!

This post was written by Angie Rines, co-facilitator of DreamPCUSA

A Front-Porch Ecclesiology: Steve Lindsley

  By emily | August 7, 2012 - 3:58 pm | , , , , , ,
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This article was written by Steve Lindsley: When Steve Lindsley is not being pastor at First Presbyterian Church at Mount Airy (NC), or playing music/ writing songs/ recording, or teaching Old and New Testament at his local community college, or writing for his blog, or running and swimming and practicing yoga, or playing pick-up basketball with his 9 and 7-year old sons and letting them win, or watching music competition reality TV shows with his lovely wife of over twelve years, it probably means he’s sleeping. Learn more about Steve at: www.stevelindsley.com. Follow Steve on Twitter: @slindsley

While I did not attend the 220th General Assembly, I stayed pretty glued to things via Twitter and the live feed, keeping tabs on the GA and the occasional tension that’s inherent in a denomination that chooses to tackle the big issues.  And while I wasn’t happy with every decision at the Assembly, I was enthused with a lot of the response that came from it – including the creation of @WeDreamPCUSA on Twitter and others hoping to make a positive change in our denomination going forward.

A couple of Saturdays ago, as part of @WeDreamPCUSA’s evening “prayer-tweeting,” my friend Reggie Weaver from First Pres. in Chicago lifted up this prayer:

 

 

 

 

 

This got me thinking about the deep ideological divide currently tugging at the future of our beloved denomination, and how – much like our current political system – we are fast becoming experts at refraining from open and authentic dialogue.  Or even dialouging at all.

Which brings me to – of all places – the front porch.

I have fond memories as a kid of visiting my grandmother’s home in Asheville, NC – a modest two-story home, probably built in the early 1900′s, in a quaint neighborhood on the west side of town.  On summer evenings we’d sit out on her front porch, which extended the length of the front of the house; sipping homemade lemonade and striking up conversations with neighbors as they passed by.  In fact, I remember my grandmother telling me that’s precisely what the front porch was designed for.  Long before the days of social media and even the telephone, porches were the only real way to catch up with what was happening in the neighborhood, the town.  It’s where you’d learn that Mae down the street was taken to the hospital, or that a new store was opening in town.  It was quite literally the doorstep to the community and beyond. The front porch was how people communicated: face-to-face, direct and relaxed dialogue.

This was in contrast, she pointed out, to the home I grew up in as a child in Raleigh – built in the 70′s; a product of the aftermath of urban flight and the advent of the suburb.  People left the city to get away, so that after a long day of work they didn’t have to face each other any more.  Home had become sanctuary and separation.  So porches, consequently, were moved from the front to the back – usually accompanied with a fenced-in backyard or hedged bushes.  Now you could go sit out on your porch with that glass of lemonade and the paper and not have to talk to a soul.

My grandmother did not care for this.  She claimed people knew less about their neighbors when the front porch was moved to the back.  And you know what?  She was right.  I didn’t know my neighbors all that well.  Still don’t.

I’ve come to wonder, as I think about the current state of our denomination, if part of our problem hinges on the fact that we are currently operating out of a backyard-porch mentality.  Meaning: we have not done a good job of placing ourselves in a position that fosters open and honest dialogue.  We sit on our “back porches,” avoiding circumstances that might bring us in contact with those who think and feel differently than we do.  We prefer seclusion and separation over true discourse and exchange.  We don’t make the effort to listen.

If that’s the case, then perhaps a front-porch ecclesiology is what our church needs right now – a concentrated effort to force ourselves back into the midst of the places for much-needed dialogue.  Getting to know each other beyond an agenda or a stance on an issue or a vote.  Experiencing the freedom to converse casually and deeply in a way that’s hard to do when we have that backyard porch to retreat to; when our uncomfortableness and defense mechanisms kick in.

So what might happen if the PCUSA started operating out of a front-porch ecclesiology?

We’d stop demonizing “the other.”  Because it’s hard to do this to a neighbor who you see in passing every day.  We’d find that they’re real people just like us, and that they’re not what we had made them out to be.  And because of that, we’d do this….

We’d hear the valid points the other side has.  Because they’re there, you know.  And on the front porch, you can’t just hang up the phone or ignore an email from an opinion you don’t agree with when it’s coming from someone standing on your sidewalk.

We’d work toward understanding and compromise. When we find out that those who disagree with us aren’t bad people and actually have some valid points, the walls start to break down and the real conversation – and hopeful solution – can take place. After all, this person lives right on your street. You’re going to be seeing an awful lot of them. You might as well get along.

I know, it’s not going to solve all our problems overnight. But it’s a start.  And I’m pretty sure my grandmother – God rest her soul – would approve. Even though she was Baptist.

Going Easy on the Church: Andrew Smith

  By emily | August 2, 2012 - 8:00 am | , , , , ,
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Dr. Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith, photo by Ron Baker

This article was written by Andrew Smith: a college professor, poet, activist, preacher, seminarian, editor, blogger, DJ, Presbyterian, & more based in Cookeville, TN. This article was posted originally on Sojourners online here.

Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopals, oh my. The recent conferences and assemblies of mainline denominations sparked the expected news and debates as churches move—much too slowly according to some—in the direction of affirmation and reformation, taking radically more inclusive stances to affirm marriage and ordination privileges for same-gender-loving parishioners and preachers.

Gay or lesbian marriage, bisexual or transgender rights—these are only some of many cultural issues facing the institutional fabric of the Christian faith. Social and political debates mirror ongoing theological speculation about the divinity of Jesus or questions concerning the existence of eternal torment in a place called hell.

If we are to believe the books and the blogs, contemporary Christian leaders live in an ongoing identity crisis, not just about one but many issues of a theological or political nature. People are debating how we define our evolving faith tradition or whether or not our faith has a future worth defining.

Whenever dialogue about the fate of faith surfaces, which seems like always (and perhaps it’s been this way since disciples first broke bread), the church gets hit the hardest. The “relationship not religion” rap remains popular on the right, the left loves to loathe abuses of ecclesial authority, and so on; thus the internal bickering multiplies like loaves.

When my denominational family in the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) decided against sanctioning gay marriage at its recent General Assembly, I expressed support for the defeated measure on my Facebook and reposted a blog that denounced some of the more bigoted remarks from the assembly’s discussion floor. An old friend who participates in a Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation read my post and replied, suggesting that I might be “going too easy on the church,” perchance because my comments accompanying the reposting were not harsher and more dramatic in my critique of religiously motivated homophobia.

This phrase, this image of “going easy on the church” stuck in my mind because the church has been quite easy for me, inviting me, a confessed sinner, into its doors and into its community, after years of walking on the wild side, what with its slippery slopes and loose living. In my experience, the church has not just been easy on reformed sinners. The church has been easy on the poor, the lonely, the recovering addicts, the very young, and the very old. The church makes life easier for a lot of people, what with so much marrying and mourning, its peacemaking and potlucks, its prayer groups and parenting classes, its rummage sales and support for refugees, its disaster relief and radical discipleship.

My experience of church resembles what Anne Lamott describes in her memoir Traveling Mercies:

Our funky little church is filled with people who are working for peace and freedom, who are out there on the streets and inside praying, and they are home writing letters, and they are at the shelters with giant platters of food. When I was at the end of my rope, the people at St. Andrew tied a knot in it for me and helped me hold on. The church became my home. . . (Anne Lamott)

To be honest, I don’t quite understand why some Christians talk a lot about loving Jesus but act like they hate the church. The church is the body of Christ in our world.

When I fled from church in my early twenties, my head was filled with anger at church, at the crusades and the witch burnings and the treatment of indigenous populations. But actually, my experience with any bricks-and-mortar church up to that point had been saturated with activism, with peace and civil rights and solidarity with the poor. Maybe some Christians skip church because of a critique of institutional power structures and internal power trips, but how many others like their personal salvation (thank you very much) but couldn’t be bothered with long-term commitments or actually obeying the commandments.

While I am grateful to see my denomination wrestle with and even inch towards full inclusion for its LGBT members, I’m definitely not ready to throw in the towel regarding PCUSA, not two years before the miracle happens, simply because some votes did not go the way that some of us wanted them to go this particular year.

Widening already vast chasms created by the culture wars—this won’t heal deep wounds in the body. As we have faithfully argued, our God and our interpretations of the Bible ought to make church a wide and wonderful enough place to accept members who are different. As Paul states so succinctly in I Corinthians, we are one but many, an interconnected sacred polity that possesses diverse gifts, sometimes much more diverse than perhaps folks perceive. Diversity means including our differently-desiring sisters and brothers, but it also means fellowshipping with those with whom we disagree.

How often I’ve heard my left-leaning religious friends suggest that this far-flung and fragmented body actually represents entirely different Gods. That is, they say, there’s no way we could disagree so vehemently on issues that matter and still worship the same Savior. But we’re monotheists, aren’t we? No matter how divergent our visions and versions of God might be, splitting God into gods is not really an option for monotheists. Admit it, some of us more easily find kinship with friends from other traditions in an interfaith context than we do with conservatives of our own faith community.

Let’s admit it—the church isn’t dying just because it doesn’t look like the open-minded, eclectic, egalitarian, and ecumenical place we want it to. May we accept even as we agitate and advocate.

I’m not ashamed of going easy on the church; the church goes easy on me. Let’s go easy on one another—not because we walk a narrow path of theological and political consistency—but because we dance in a wide open field where we accept, admire, and work within the open-ended frame of our differences.