Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Christmas Eve in a Barn" for Monday, 19 December 2016
Christmas Eve in a Barn ALL SAINTS' UNITED METHODIST'S CELEBRATION A SPECTACLE & A SACRAMENT
All Saints' United Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, began holding a Christmas Eve service outside in 2009; the service illustrates that God isn’t above becoming a spectacle for our salvation.
Photo courtesy of All Saints' UMC
I never wanted to be a field preacher.
Growing up in rural South Carolina, I developed a healthy suspicion of people who preach outside. There is a long history in the Lowcountry of outdoor pulpits being occupied by traveling evangelists who go from town to town selling salvation to people who have been saved annually at the same tent revivals for as long as anyone can remember.
As good mainstream churchgoers, my parents taught me to properly roll my eyes as we drove by the circus tents surrounded by yard signs that read "Jesus Saves" and "Heaven or Hell?" To this day, the notion of field preaching seems to me more like a spectacle than a sacrament.
The irony is that I happen to be Methodist. Which means that, ecclesially speaking, I am the great-great-great-grandchild of field preachers. One of the predominant stained-glass windows that illumined the sacred story to me as a child was a scene of John Wesley preaching outside to the coal miners.
It was as if the people who designed that sanctuary wanted to remind those of us settled into our pews not to get too comfortable in that building. Our real place, the Wesleyan sunlit shards of glass told us, was outside.
So my faith was born in an unhappy marriage of disdain and gratitude for field preaching. While my family and I liked to distance ourselves from the traveling gospel circus tents, there was also a realization that we found our way to the table because John Wesley, and hundreds like him, became "more vile" for the sake of the gospel and preached outside.
I thought that I had escaped this awkward family heritage until Christmas Eve 2009, when I became a field preacher.
Faith & Leadership
LITURGICAL SEASONS, CHRISTMAS
Greg Moore: Christmas Eve in a barn
A pastor reluctantly becomes a field preacher when his congregation decides to celebrate Christmas Eve as the holy family did -- outside. But he learns to love it, both as spectacle and as sacrament.
I never wanted to be a field preacher.
Growing up in rural South Carolina, I developed a healthy suspicion of people who preach outside. There is a long history in the Lowcountry of outdoor pulpits being occupied by traveling evangelists who go from town to town selling salvation to people who have been saved annually at the same tent revivals for as long as anyone can remember.
As good mainstream churchgoers, my parents taught me to properly roll my eyes as we drove by the circus tents surrounded by yard signs that read “Jesus Saves” and “Heaven or Hell?” To this day, the notion of field preaching seems to me more like a spectacle than a sacrament.
The irony is that I happen to be Methodist. Which means that, ecclesially speaking, I am the great-great-great-grandchild of field preachers. One of the predominant stained-glass windows that illumined the sacred story to me as a child was a scene of John Wesley preaching outside to the coal miners.
It was as if the people who designed that sanctuary wanted to remind those of us settled into our pews not to get too comfortable in that building. Our real place, the Wesleyan sunlit shards of glass told us, was outside.
So my faith was born in an unhappy marriage of disdain and gratitude for field preaching. While my family and I liked to distance ourselves from the traveling gospel circus tents, there was also a realization that we found our way to the table because John Wesley, and hundreds like him, became “more vile” for the sake of the gospel and preached outside.
I thought that I had escaped this awkward family heritage until Christmas Eve 2009, when I became a field preacher.
Bishop Al Gwinn had sent me to pioneer the founding of a church in a newly developed area of Raleigh, North Carolina. We worshipped on Sundays in the local elementary school and used people’s homes for discipleship groups and mission planning.
As Christmas was approaching that year, I was outwardly bemoaning the fact that we wouldn’t be able to worship together on Christmas Eve (while inwardly anticipating spending the time at home with my family). Just as I had mentally nestled all snug in my bed, one of our members said, “What if we worshipped outside? That’s where the holy family was.”
I quickly tried to squelch the conversation as visions of circus tents and yard signs danced in my head. But the more they talked, the more the vision grew. Another member said that he knew a man who owned a local farm. He would ask whether we could use his barn.
As it turned out, the “farm” was a donkey and the “barn” was a doghouse where the donkey slept. Nevertheless, we set up the communion table just on the other side of the fence from the “manger,” lit candles and read the second chapter of Luke. And I preached my first field sermon to a crowd of about 20 folks and one very confused donkey.
Six years later, our Christmas Eve service has grown into an event. Some may even say it is a spectacle. We have moved into a bigger barn, which is generously provided by one of the last family farms in Raleigh. News cameras make an annual appearance, and floodlights illuminate a field where thousands of people park their cars as they make their way into the barn. I preach from a trough while cows eat their Christmas Eve dinner around my feet, and we celebrate communion on an altar made from bales of hay.
We even have yard signs.
While part of me instinctively wants to roll my eyes at the whole thing, there is another part of me -- a larger part of me -- that is deeply grateful for the way in which God has, by grace, lured me into joining the holy family outside on Christmas Eve.
And while I’m sure that some people come to worship in the barn on Christmas Eve because of the novelty and spectacle of it all, I’ve also come to be deeply grateful that God, by grace, has lured them into joining the feast as well.
If nothing else, the incarnation reveals to us a God who isn’t above becoming a spectacle for our salvation. There is no other way to describe what happens when God takes on flesh. Royal robes are sullied in kneeling at the trough, and beggars’ rags are esteemed in swaddling Emmanuel.
One percenters are discomfited fearful. Minimum-wage workers find hope. An unwed teenage mother is entrusted with nursing the salvation of the world. And the company of heavenly hosts sings as the fields become sanctuaries in the spectacle of God’s sacrament taking on flesh in the world.
No wonder this draws a crowd. This is worth coming outside to see.
I have come to believe that the body of Christ is quite at home on the feast of the Nativity outside in a borrowed space.
On Christmas Eve, the church celebrates that God, in Christ, has become more vile, the incorruptible taking on the corruptible, the immortal taking on mortality, all for our sake. And following the body of Christ, many of us who are normally more at home in a sanctuary than a stall are able to wonder at God’s sacred descent and to witness to the truth of Mary’s song, “God has lifted up the lowly.”
As much as I would like to think myself and my church above field preaching, the truth is that for at least one night a year, the Christ child invites us outside and lifts us to up to the level of angels. In the barn, heaven and earth kiss as saints and sinners, angels and archangels, and at least one reluctant field preacher sing together over the fields and floods, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”Read more about All Saints' United Methodist Church »
A HOLIDAY MESSAGE FROM ALBAN
Several holidays are being celebrated by Alban Weekly readers this month, and we wish you all the blessings of this season. Thank you for being part of the Alban community in 2016. Alban Weekly will resume on January 9. We look forward to continuing to serve you in the new year!
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CHRISTMAS
Away from the Manger
End-of-the-year tasks can pull Christian leaders' attention away from what really matters during the Christmas season. But a pastor finds that even when he is not attentive, God still comes.
Faith & Leadership
LITURGICAL SEASONS, CHRISTMAS
Away from the manger
End-of-the-year tasks can pull Christian leaders’ attention away from what really matters during the Christmas season. But Mark Ralls finds that even when he is not attentive, God still comes.An old folk tale that goes all the way back to the second century imagines what the moment of Christ’s birth was like for Joseph. In this story, Joseph is not by Mary’s side. He has left the manger in search of a midwife -- someone to help with the impending birth. Approaching a nearby village, Joseph has an eerie experience.
Joseph sees a shepherd in the field. The shepherd is dipping a piece of bread into a clay pot. The shepherd’s hand is stilled -- for just an instant -- the bread suspended before his mouth. Above Joseph -- the same instant -- a bird stalls, its wings momentarily frozen in flight. The night breeze, brisk against his face, evaporates. All of this seems to happen at once, in what Madeleine L’Engle called “a wrinkle in time.” Everything is still. The next instant the world around Joseph returns to regular motions. The shepherd chews his bread. The bird flies away. The wind picks up again.
Joseph is not quite sure what, if anything, has happened. Then it dawns on him. Mary’s child -- the Son of God -- was born. And in that instant everything grew still.
As a pastor and Christian leader, I appreciate this old tale as a story of grace. Joseph is not where he is supposed to be. He has departed from the center of God’s miraculous activity. He is away from the manger. And still God comes to him. God speaks. God touches him in a single moment of stillness.
This holy time of year, I’m often not where I am supposed to be. I drift to concerns that are certainly less central than incarnation yet somehow feel more pressing. The stewardship campaign. The nomination of new church leaders. The unwritten Christmas Eve homily.
Like Joseph, I can’t sit still. I need something to do. And, at this time of year, there is always something that needs attention. Like Joseph, I may have solid intentions, but I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Sometimes -- I’m ashamed to admit -- Christmas comes and goes and I realize I wasn’t really there. In my heart, I was still fiddling with my end-of-the-year pastoral checklist. Like Joseph, I was away from the manger.
Some years, it is not until the final chorus of “Silent Night” dissolves into our candlelit sanctuary stones. Sometimes, it’s not until our services are finally over and I’m alone in the car. A stoplight stills me along the empty streets of early Christmas morning. Some years, it is not until the next day, after the nervous energy has worn down. I awake from a Christmas-day nap. Everything is still and I feel -- finally -- that wrinkle in time. God comes as God did for wayward Joseph. I haven’t been where I’m supposed to be, but still God comes.
In earlier days, Christian spirituality spoke of the power of attachment. Derived from harsh roots meaning “staked” or “nailed to,” our attachments bring both opportunity and danger. If I attach my attentions to God in Christ -- if I stake my claim there -- my life takes a certain shape. If I attach myself to other things, I become something different from what I was created to be. Could it be that I have allowed myself to become so attached to my role as a Christian leader that I drift away from my identity as a follower of Jesus Christ?
It never fails. At the close of every year I am shocked by the recognition of the hold my attachments have on me. Like Joseph, I drift away from the one thing that should have captured my attention. And yet, every Christmas, God still comes. I think that’s grace. Even when we are away from the manger, God still comes for us.
Read more from Mark Ralls »-------
In the midst of imperfection, Jesus appeared
Mary and Joseph were momentarily trapped in a side room without a key. One little angel in a red truck sweater and khakis, wire-and-tinsel wings askew, was "done" long before the play's end. Even the setting was off. Because floor repairs in the church's soaring Gothic Revival sanctuary would not be finished for another week, the annual Christmas pageant was being held in the decidedly less stately gym.
Yet in the midst of all the imperfection, Jesus appeared.
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, LITURGICAL SEASONS, CHRISTMAS
In the midst of imperfection, Jesus appeared
At Church Street UMC's pageant, sleeping shepherds are about to be awakened by angels bearing good news. Photos by Wade Payne
A spur-of-the-moment event with a wide variety of participants, the annual Christmas pageant at Church Street UMC in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a celebration filled with grace, imperfection and joy.
Mary and Joseph were momentarily trapped in a side room without a key.
One little angel in a red truck sweater and khakis, wire-and-tinsel wings askew, was “done” long before the play’s end.
Even the setting was off. Because floor repairs in the church’s soaring Gothic Revival sanctuary would not be finished for another week, the annual Christmas pageant was being held in the decidedly less stately gym.
Yet in the midst of all the imperfection, Jesus appeared.
Young eyes shone. Creased faces smiled. And as the star of Bethlehem made its way overhead toward the stage, kings and queens in construction-paper crowns following behind, the gift of the season became just a little more tangible and accessible to all.
Cute kids and familiar miscues aside, the annual Christmas pageant at Church Street United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, is different from most such events. The play itself is unrehearsed, a spur-of-the-moment presentation, with the cast -- mostly children and a few adults -- eagerly volunteering for their favorite roles.
And both the actors and the audience include not only church members but a variety of folks from throughout the area, people who live in some of Knoxville’s nicest neighborhoods and people who are homeless, people who have plenty and people who are going through hard times.
“This is not a church that turns its nose up,” said Ricky Hasbrouck, who for nine years lived on the streets and first came to Church Street through its Thursday soup kitchen. “I just love the people here. And I’ve always been one who, if you help me, I’m going to help you.”
On a Sunday night a few weeks ago, Hasbrouck, now a church member, helped in the kitchen. He helped guide the Bethlehem star. He mingled with affluent church families and disadvantaged children and mentally challenged adults.
The church’s parish hall was full of people making crafts, singing songs, taking pictures and sharing grilled-cheese sandwiches and chili at tables decorated with red and green. Soon, they would all head to the gym, the children excited to don their costumes, the adults ready to experience the story anew.
It was an atmosphere at once simple, divine -- and expectant.
The pageant’s beginnings
The Church Street pageant began about 25 years ago with a conversation at a church staff meeting. For several years, the church had held two separate Christmas celebrations, one for members and one for the people who were served by the church’s many outreach ministries.
But then the question came: Why two events?
The celebration ends with a glove, mitten and hat givewaway.A large landmark church in the middle of Knoxville (the church has about 1,700 members, with roughly 700 attending the two Sunday services), Church Street UMC has long had an extensive mission and outreach program.
Over the years, it has offered not only the weekly soup kitchen but also worship services for people who are homeless or otherwise marginalized; after-school and tutoring programs for children from nearby public housing; emergency financial assistance and financial training programs; adult day care/respite care for seniors; a preschool; and partnership with the United Methodist Women’s Wesley House Community Center.
So why not bring these groups and church members together in a fresh way? And at the same time, why not create an off-the-cuff event that would allow for grace, imperfection and joy in the shared experience?
Or, as then-pastor, now-retired Bishop Kenneth Carder put it, why not offer a new way to talk about the inclusiveness of the kingdom? Carder, who pastored the church from 1988 to 1992, remembers a bit of trepidation that first year -- but there hasn’t been any since.
Repairs in the sanctuary may have forced the 2014 pageant
into the gym, but the Christmas miracle still happened.Those early community Christmas pageants, Carder said, helped inform his own convictions and commitment for ministry. They taught him that Christmas cannot be adequately celebrated in homogeneous, isolated, secure environments, whether churches or homes.
“It helped make the story of the incarnation more concrete, more relational and more relevant to where the church needs to be today,” he said.
This year, the largest number of participants from outside the church membership came from Wesley House, a 107-year-old Knoxville ministry that provides a variety of services to children and seniors. Volunteers from Church Street work regularly with the families served by Wesley House. In previous years, many children have come through Montgomery Village Ministry, an organization that provides spiritual, economic and educational assistance to area residents.
For some church members at least, the pageant provides “a departure from the regular liturgy and high-church feel,” said pageant organizer Sue Piper.
Community coming together
“It’s small-townish, with all of those mental images of Christmas and the stories we grew up with, the community all coming together to put on a play,” she said. “When I look out on the people who are there, it’s serene and peaceful. There’s this ‘This is how it’s supposed to be’ feel to it.”
After this year’s performance, Pati Scott, a Church Street member for 30 years, was struck by how different the pageant was when held in the gym instead of the sanctuary.
“I think I liked it better,” she said. “We could sit up close. It was more personal. And I think the children felt more at ease.”
Frames and photos are a special keepsake for participants.Last year, Caroline Lamar, the church’s communications director, added a craft activity for the children. She found foam frames that could be decorated and took a picture of each child, printing the pictures on-site for the kids to mount in the frames and take home.
“It just seemed so simple at the time,” she said. “It was just something that was meant to fill the time, but it turned into this special thing, and gave them a new sense of worth. We found that some of the homeless adults wanted theirs taken, too. And the van driver, taking the kids home, later told me that they were all clutching their picture frames on the way, so excited to have that keepsake.”
Over the past few years, Lamar said, more church members have been taking an active and visible part in the evening’s festivities. There was a time when members were more likely to be behind the scenes, helping with cookies, costumes, or the gloves, mittens and hats given away at the evening’s end.
“But it’s like we’ve come full circle,” she said. “I’ve heard from so many families how much they’ve been looking forward to being there.”
At this year’s event, for example, neighbors Jenny Herchenrider and Kathleen King, each with two young daughters, piled the four girls onto a bench for a group picture. Four years ago, Herchenrider, with her then-newborn, Abby, portrayed Mary in the pageant. This year, King came as her guest. King is looking for a new church home for her family, and Church Street’s involvement in the broader community “is most definitely important,” she said.
Call for actors
After the photo shoot, King’s girls, ages 2 and 3, crowded around the craft table with a dozen or so elementary-age kids, ranging greatly in experience and background. Later, when “Ephraim” the storyteller began asking for volunteers to take part in the play, the enthusiasm mounted throughout the room.
Aspiring angels get their wings and halos ready for the pageant.At least 30 of the 50 or so children chose to be angels, gathering in a side room to put on white robes and shiny tinsel halos. Some twirled and spun around. A half-dozen or so elected to be shepherds, fashioning robes from plaid fabric.
And when the call went out for kings, queens and wise men, one young boy responded with a cheer of, “Treasure!” as he left the room.
Later, adjusting her crown, one girl easily explained why she chose her role.
“I’ve always been an angel,” she said. “It’s time for something different.”
The Rev. Matt Hampton, a Church Street associate pastor, experienced his first pageant at the church this year. Serving as the evening’s unofficial emcee, he stood at the back of the gym, smiling as the pageant began.
All churches can be stressful at times, he said. They all have certain events or gatherings that can be challenging and require lots of preparation.
“But this is not one of those things,” he said. “This church is mission-minded, and there are a lot of people here who want to make real connections with our neighbors, with the people in our community.”
What we are called to do
As a pastor, Hampton said, he wants Church Street members to grow as human beings, to be happy, healthy and whole. Events such as the Christmas pageant can help that happen.
It's showtime, as a chorus of angels heads to the gym.Hampton said he had an alcoholic father and was raised by a single mother who depended on food stamps, a history that gave him compassion and understanding for those who struggle. Events like the pageant can bring commonalities into full focus.
“This is our path,” he said. “This is what we are called to as disciples.”
His predecessor at Church Street UMC, the Rev. Darryll Rasnake, agrees.
“It’s been interesting how the lines have blurred between those who are volunteering and those who are participating,” said Rasnake, now the pastor at Beaver Ridge United Methodist Church in Knoxville. “When people show up, I think sometimes they don’t really know why they’re there. But it’s always a night filled with a lot of grace.”
Eric Johnson, a lay leader at Hillcrest United Methodist Church in Knoxville, has participated in Church Street’s event in various ways since 2008.
“We talk about how divided churches are -- racially, economically and in other ways,” he said. “But this ‘community Christmas’ seems to be an exception to that. There are the most appropriate interactions that take place there between people that come from very different experiences. It’s unique.”
Carder, the retired bishop and former Church Street pastor, said the pageant has been that way since the beginning.
“Some of the most profound experiences I had while I was at Church Street took place during those events,” he said.
Carder recalled a man who attended one of the Christmas pageants many years ago. Homeless, he was a regular at the church’s soup kitchen, but no one had ever heard him speak.
Young shepherds' eyes shine, as they meet the baby Jesus.“He always kept his eyes on the floor when anyone would pass him,” Carder said. “He was very shy, and almost appeared to be afraid.”
But at that year’s pageant, the man volunteered to be a king.
“I happened to turn and see him coming up the aisle as the story was being read,” Carder said. “He was bearing a gift. He was carrying the gold. And I was struck by the fact that his eyes were not on the floor. They were clearly on the altar.”
The man approached Mary and Joseph, reverently knelt in front of the baby, and presented the gift as if it were real gold.
Afterward, Carder saw the man taking off his bathrobe costume and told him, “You made a wonderful king.”
“It was the first time -- the only time -- I ever saw him smile,” Carder said. “He looked me squarely in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’ And I told him, ‘You are a king. You’re a child of the king, and that makes you mighty important.’
“You don’t ever know the lasting impact of these experiences, but it’s these moments you remember.”
Questions to consider:
Read more »
-------
What does it mean to be a minister without a congregation at Advent and Christmas?
I love my work as a university chaplain. Few other vocations offer the opportunity to embrace church, kingdom and academy at once, and I'm grateful for the chance to serve in such a vibrant vineyard.
The setting can be pastorally challenging this time of year, though. My ordained friends who serve in settings other than the local church say they share this experience as well. The Advent and Christmas season is vocationally bewildering for clergy who lack a year-round congregational ministry.
Faith & Leadership
LITURGICAL SEASONS, ADVENT, CHRISTMAS
Craig T. Kocher: What does it mean to be a minister without a congregation at Advent and Christmas?
Clergy who work in settings other than the local church experience a sense of dislocation during this season. But, as a university chaplain has found, that discomfort can lead to new insights.
I love my work as a university chaplain. Few other vocations offer the opportunity to embrace church, kingdom and academy at once, and I’m grateful for the chance to serve in such a vibrant vineyard.
The setting can be pastorally challenging this time of year, though. My ordained friends who serve in settings other than the local church say they share this experience as well. The Advent and Christmas season is vocationally bewildering for clergy who lack a year-round congregational ministry.
The first eight years of my ministry were either in a local church or in a university chapel with a congregation that worshipped every Sunday. During those years, I loved the sacred energy of Advent and Christmas.
As the season unfolded, my preaching grew in urgency and my prayers grew in thanksgiving. The music and liturgy swelled as the days became shorter and the candles burned brighter. The rigorous pastoral life that could diminish my soul during the heat of summer issued in confidence as the days became colder.
The rhythm is different here at the University of Richmond. Cannon Chapel fills for two evening services of lessons and carols on the first Sunday of December. The worship is a wonder to receive -- a glorious setting, a large and classically trained collegiate choir, exquisite musicians and gifted readers.
Tears flow when we raise our candles in the dark to sing “Silent Night.” I offer the benediction, and my Christmas ministry is finished. Full stop. Students trudge directly from the chapel to the library. Exams start the next day. Within a week, the students go home and the campus is quiet. December has only just begun.
Thus the vocational challenge: What does the pastor without a congregational ministry home do within this sacred season?
For the first few years, I slouched into a mild December melancholy, feeling like an artist with nothing to paint. I’d wake on a Sunday in Advent with a preacher’s nervous stomach and then remember I would not be leading worship. My flock had gone away to homes across the world. Christmas for them would be in their home churches, as it should be.
Meanwhile, I’d shuffle into a pew someplace, listen to one pastor or another proclaim the good news of Christ’s coming, pray piously, sing lustily and wonder why I felt so hollow inside.
After wrestling with the annual December emptiness for a few years, I gradually began to hear the familiar story in a different way. The holy family did not fit in either. Leaving Nazareth, they were without a home or a synagogue, without friends or family. They were pilgrims on a journey.
When I heard the Christmas drama as a story of pilgrimage and social dislocation, I began to think about my vocational disorientation differently. What if I could receive my feelings of melancholy and displacement as a form of spiritual pilgrimage? What if, rather than leading others toward holiness, my calling at Christmas was to deepen my own spiritual life?
What if the yearning in my soul was less about a pulpit and professional ministry and more about my own desire for God, less about public proclamation and more about private prayer, less about disorientation and more about discipleship, less about gifts to be given to others and more about the hidden gifts God may be giving to me?
I slowly came to realize that welcoming my vocational vertigo was a path to deepen my personal holiness and an avenue to strengthen my ministry. The Christmas story of pilgrimage, the pilgrimage God makes from heaven to earth in Jesus to make his home with us so that we might be made at home with God, and the pilgrimage the holy family makes from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and from Bethlehem to Egypt, offers rich emotional and theological imagery for ministry throughout the year.
Pastoral work on a college campus is about learning to shepherd a parade of pilgrims. Students come from somewhere and are going to somewhere. The campus is but a layover, a blip -- exceedingly influential, but still a blip -- in the trajectory of their lives.
On the frenetic journey of their emerging adulthood, many are struggling with their conception of themselves and of God, with their faith, with the meaning of home.
These anxieties unearth big questions: Will I ever find my place in the world? Will I find someone to spend my life with? Will I discover a purpose worthy of my deepest beliefs and passions? What are my deepest beliefs and passions? Do I have a home? If I run off to a far country, will I find my way back? And so forth.
A significant part of ministry on a college campus is helping students learn to welcome the pilgrim way, to grow in grace and trust in the Spirit’s work, and to trust themselves enough to receive an unknown future as a place of God’s abundance rather than scarcity. Much of my job is helping them understand that the fragmentation they feel during their young adult years is something everyone experiences -- and is a means of learning to live by grace alone.
I often say, “Maybe your sense of disorientation and spiritual emptiness is actually a hidden gift. Perhaps that’s precisely the place where the pilgrim Jesus is at work in you, and thus where you might find your peace in God.” My students are often comforted and surprised by this insight. “How do you know?” they ask.
“I learn that lesson every year at Christmas,” I say.
Read more from Craig T. Kocher »
UPCOMING ONLINE COURSE: SOURCING INNOVATION
Chances are good that your institution needs to change in some way if it's to thrive (or even survive). You know it. You embrace the idea. But you don't know what to do, or even where to begin.
Join visual anthropologist and filmmaker Marlon Hall and a community of other Christian leaders for this five-week online course (January 30 - March 1, 2017) as we move step-by-step through the process of learning from a community, which is the foundational step to engage in innovative ministry.
Sourcing Innovation will provide you with the skills to lead innovation to improve the common life. You will learn to examine your community to determine:
Where you want to engage;
With whom you want to engage;
How to develop meaningful partnerships with those people; and
What to do with what you learn.
Learn more and register »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
The Wisdom of the Seasons by Charles M. Olsen
The church year is often seen as a framework for church programs, but well-known Alban author Charles Olsen shows readers how it can be a prism through which congregations more deeply understand their own stories. By weaving together our narratives and those of Christian tradition, a congregation can clarify its identity, grow in wisdom, and discover a new vision and ministry. Olsen draws parallels between the church seasons and practices of spiritual formation -- letting go, naming and celebrating God's presence, and taking hold. He shows us how these movements are expressed in the three major cycles of the church year -- Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Focusing on communal narratives, he presents a process for telling a story and forming a corporate memory of the story, and then deepening and reflecting on it by exploring the season of the church year that captures its character.
Learn more and order the book »
In the midst of imperfection, Jesus appeared
Mary and Joseph were momentarily trapped in a side room without a key. One little angel in a red truck sweater and khakis, wire-and-tinsel wings askew, was "done" long before the play's end. Even the setting was off. Because floor repairs in the church's soaring Gothic Revival sanctuary would not be finished for another week, the annual Christmas pageant was being held in the decidedly less stately gym.
Yet in the midst of all the imperfection, Jesus appeared.
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, LITURGICAL SEASONS, CHRISTMAS
In the midst of imperfection, Jesus appeared
At Church Street UMC's pageant, sleeping shepherds are about to be awakened by angels bearing good news. Photos by Wade PayneA spur-of-the-moment event with a wide variety of participants, the annual Christmas pageant at Church Street UMC in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a celebration filled with grace, imperfection and joy.
Mary and Joseph were momentarily trapped in a side room without a key.
One little angel in a red truck sweater and khakis, wire-and-tinsel wings askew, was “done” long before the play’s end.
Even the setting was off. Because floor repairs in the church’s soaring Gothic Revival sanctuary would not be finished for another week, the annual Christmas pageant was being held in the decidedly less stately gym.
Yet in the midst of all the imperfection, Jesus appeared.
Young eyes shone. Creased faces smiled. And as the star of Bethlehem made its way overhead toward the stage, kings and queens in construction-paper crowns following behind, the gift of the season became just a little more tangible and accessible to all.
Cute kids and familiar miscues aside, the annual Christmas pageant at Church Street United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, is different from most such events. The play itself is unrehearsed, a spur-of-the-moment presentation, with the cast -- mostly children and a few adults -- eagerly volunteering for their favorite roles.
And both the actors and the audience include not only church members but a variety of folks from throughout the area, people who live in some of Knoxville’s nicest neighborhoods and people who are homeless, people who have plenty and people who are going through hard times.
“This is not a church that turns its nose up,” said Ricky Hasbrouck, who for nine years lived on the streets and first came to Church Street through its Thursday soup kitchen. “I just love the people here. And I’ve always been one who, if you help me, I’m going to help you.”
On a Sunday night a few weeks ago, Hasbrouck, now a church member, helped in the kitchen. He helped guide the Bethlehem star. He mingled with affluent church families and disadvantaged children and mentally challenged adults.
The church’s parish hall was full of people making crafts, singing songs, taking pictures and sharing grilled-cheese sandwiches and chili at tables decorated with red and green. Soon, they would all head to the gym, the children excited to don their costumes, the adults ready to experience the story anew.
It was an atmosphere at once simple, divine -- and expectant.
The pageant’s beginnings
The Church Street pageant began about 25 years ago with a conversation at a church staff meeting. For several years, the church had held two separate Christmas celebrations, one for members and one for the people who were served by the church’s many outreach ministries.
But then the question came: Why two events?
The celebration ends with a glove, mitten and hat givewaway.A large landmark church in the middle of Knoxville (the church has about 1,700 members, with roughly 700 attending the two Sunday services), Church Street UMC has long had an extensive mission and outreach program.Over the years, it has offered not only the weekly soup kitchen but also worship services for people who are homeless or otherwise marginalized; after-school and tutoring programs for children from nearby public housing; emergency financial assistance and financial training programs; adult day care/respite care for seniors; a preschool; and partnership with the United Methodist Women’s Wesley House Community Center.
So why not bring these groups and church members together in a fresh way? And at the same time, why not create an off-the-cuff event that would allow for grace, imperfection and joy in the shared experience?
Or, as then-pastor, now-retired Bishop Kenneth Carder put it, why not offer a new way to talk about the inclusiveness of the kingdom? Carder, who pastored the church from 1988 to 1992, remembers a bit of trepidation that first year -- but there hasn’t been any since.
Repairs in the sanctuary may have forced the 2014 pageantinto the gym, but the Christmas miracle still happened.Those early community Christmas pageants, Carder said, helped inform his own convictions and commitment for ministry. They taught him that Christmas cannot be adequately celebrated in homogeneous, isolated, secure environments, whether churches or homes.
“It helped make the story of the incarnation more concrete, more relational and more relevant to where the church needs to be today,” he said.
This year, the largest number of participants from outside the church membership came from Wesley House, a 107-year-old Knoxville ministry that provides a variety of services to children and seniors. Volunteers from Church Street work regularly with the families served by Wesley House. In previous years, many children have come through Montgomery Village Ministry, an organization that provides spiritual, economic and educational assistance to area residents.
For some church members at least, the pageant provides “a departure from the regular liturgy and high-church feel,” said pageant organizer Sue Piper.
Community coming together
“It’s small-townish, with all of those mental images of Christmas and the stories we grew up with, the community all coming together to put on a play,” she said. “When I look out on the people who are there, it’s serene and peaceful. There’s this ‘This is how it’s supposed to be’ feel to it.”
After this year’s performance, Pati Scott, a Church Street member for 30 years, was struck by how different the pageant was when held in the gym instead of the sanctuary.
“I think I liked it better,” she said. “We could sit up close. It was more personal. And I think the children felt more at ease.”
Frames and photos are a special keepsake for participants.Last year, Caroline Lamar, the church’s communications director, added a craft activity for the children. She found foam frames that could be decorated and took a picture of each child, printing the pictures on-site for the kids to mount in the frames and take home.“It just seemed so simple at the time,” she said. “It was just something that was meant to fill the time, but it turned into this special thing, and gave them a new sense of worth. We found that some of the homeless adults wanted theirs taken, too. And the van driver, taking the kids home, later told me that they were all clutching their picture frames on the way, so excited to have that keepsake.”
Over the past few years, Lamar said, more church members have been taking an active and visible part in the evening’s festivities. There was a time when members were more likely to be behind the scenes, helping with cookies, costumes, or the gloves, mittens and hats given away at the evening’s end.
“But it’s like we’ve come full circle,” she said. “I’ve heard from so many families how much they’ve been looking forward to being there.”
At this year’s event, for example, neighbors Jenny Herchenrider and Kathleen King, each with two young daughters, piled the four girls onto a bench for a group picture. Four years ago, Herchenrider, with her then-newborn, Abby, portrayed Mary in the pageant. This year, King came as her guest. King is looking for a new church home for her family, and Church Street’s involvement in the broader community “is most definitely important,” she said.
Call for actors
After the photo shoot, King’s girls, ages 2 and 3, crowded around the craft table with a dozen or so elementary-age kids, ranging greatly in experience and background. Later, when “Ephraim” the storyteller began asking for volunteers to take part in the play, the enthusiasm mounted throughout the room.
Aspiring angels get their wings and halos ready for the pageant.At least 30 of the 50 or so children chose to be angels, gathering in a side room to put on white robes and shiny tinsel halos. Some twirled and spun around. A half-dozen or so elected to be shepherds, fashioning robes from plaid fabric.And when the call went out for kings, queens and wise men, one young boy responded with a cheer of, “Treasure!” as he left the room.
Later, adjusting her crown, one girl easily explained why she chose her role.
“I’ve always been an angel,” she said. “It’s time for something different.”
The Rev. Matt Hampton, a Church Street associate pastor, experienced his first pageant at the church this year. Serving as the evening’s unofficial emcee, he stood at the back of the gym, smiling as the pageant began.
All churches can be stressful at times, he said. They all have certain events or gatherings that can be challenging and require lots of preparation.
“But this is not one of those things,” he said. “This church is mission-minded, and there are a lot of people here who want to make real connections with our neighbors, with the people in our community.”
What we are called to do
As a pastor, Hampton said, he wants Church Street members to grow as human beings, to be happy, healthy and whole. Events such as the Christmas pageant can help that happen.
It's showtime, as a chorus of angels heads to the gym.Hampton said he had an alcoholic father and was raised by a single mother who depended on food stamps, a history that gave him compassion and understanding for those who struggle. Events like the pageant can bring commonalities into full focus.“This is our path,” he said. “This is what we are called to as disciples.”
His predecessor at Church Street UMC, the Rev. Darryll Rasnake, agrees.
“It’s been interesting how the lines have blurred between those who are volunteering and those who are participating,” said Rasnake, now the pastor at Beaver Ridge United Methodist Church in Knoxville. “When people show up, I think sometimes they don’t really know why they’re there. But it’s always a night filled with a lot of grace.”
Eric Johnson, a lay leader at Hillcrest United Methodist Church in Knoxville, has participated in Church Street’s event in various ways since 2008.
“We talk about how divided churches are -- racially, economically and in other ways,” he said. “But this ‘community Christmas’ seems to be an exception to that. There are the most appropriate interactions that take place there between people that come from very different experiences. It’s unique.”
Carder, the retired bishop and former Church Street pastor, said the pageant has been that way since the beginning.
“Some of the most profound experiences I had while I was at Church Street took place during those events,” he said.
Carder recalled a man who attended one of the Christmas pageants many years ago. Homeless, he was a regular at the church’s soup kitchen, but no one had ever heard him speak.
Young shepherds' eyes shine, as they meet the baby Jesus.“He always kept his eyes on the floor when anyone would pass him,” Carder said. “He was very shy, and almost appeared to be afraid.”But at that year’s pageant, the man volunteered to be a king.
“I happened to turn and see him coming up the aisle as the story was being read,” Carder said. “He was bearing a gift. He was carrying the gold. And I was struck by the fact that his eyes were not on the floor. They were clearly on the altar.”
The man approached Mary and Joseph, reverently knelt in front of the baby, and presented the gift as if it were real gold.
Afterward, Carder saw the man taking off his bathrobe costume and told him, “You made a wonderful king.”
“It was the first time -- the only time -- I ever saw him smile,” Carder said. “He looked me squarely in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’ And I told him, ‘You are a king. You’re a child of the king, and that makes you mighty important.’
“You don’t ever know the lasting impact of these experiences, but it’s these moments you remember.”
Questions to consider:
- How comfortable with imperfection is your church or organization and its leaders? How could it benefit by being more accepting of imperfection?
- How does your organization balance the need for planning and spontaneity?
- Where do you see the incarnation made real? How does your church make it relevant to the world today?
- When did you last have the sense that “this is how it is supposed to be?” What prompted it?
- What can your church do to help people see and appreciate the commonalities they share with others?
- What part would you want? Angel, shepherd or wise man?
Read more »
-------
What does it mean to be a minister without a congregation at Advent and Christmas?
I love my work as a university chaplain. Few other vocations offer the opportunity to embrace church, kingdom and academy at once, and I'm grateful for the chance to serve in such a vibrant vineyard.
The setting can be pastorally challenging this time of year, though. My ordained friends who serve in settings other than the local church say they share this experience as well. The Advent and Christmas season is vocationally bewildering for clergy who lack a year-round congregational ministry.
Faith & Leadership
LITURGICAL SEASONS, ADVENT, CHRISTMAS
Craig T. Kocher: What does it mean to be a minister without a congregation at Advent and Christmas?
Clergy who work in settings other than the local church experience a sense of dislocation during this season. But, as a university chaplain has found, that discomfort can lead to new insights.I love my work as a university chaplain. Few other vocations offer the opportunity to embrace church, kingdom and academy at once, and I’m grateful for the chance to serve in such a vibrant vineyard.
The setting can be pastorally challenging this time of year, though. My ordained friends who serve in settings other than the local church say they share this experience as well. The Advent and Christmas season is vocationally bewildering for clergy who lack a year-round congregational ministry.
The first eight years of my ministry were either in a local church or in a university chapel with a congregation that worshipped every Sunday. During those years, I loved the sacred energy of Advent and Christmas.
As the season unfolded, my preaching grew in urgency and my prayers grew in thanksgiving. The music and liturgy swelled as the days became shorter and the candles burned brighter. The rigorous pastoral life that could diminish my soul during the heat of summer issued in confidence as the days became colder.
The rhythm is different here at the University of Richmond. Cannon Chapel fills for two evening services of lessons and carols on the first Sunday of December. The worship is a wonder to receive -- a glorious setting, a large and classically trained collegiate choir, exquisite musicians and gifted readers.
Tears flow when we raise our candles in the dark to sing “Silent Night.” I offer the benediction, and my Christmas ministry is finished. Full stop. Students trudge directly from the chapel to the library. Exams start the next day. Within a week, the students go home and the campus is quiet. December has only just begun.
Thus the vocational challenge: What does the pastor without a congregational ministry home do within this sacred season?
For the first few years, I slouched into a mild December melancholy, feeling like an artist with nothing to paint. I’d wake on a Sunday in Advent with a preacher’s nervous stomach and then remember I would not be leading worship. My flock had gone away to homes across the world. Christmas for them would be in their home churches, as it should be.
Meanwhile, I’d shuffle into a pew someplace, listen to one pastor or another proclaim the good news of Christ’s coming, pray piously, sing lustily and wonder why I felt so hollow inside.
After wrestling with the annual December emptiness for a few years, I gradually began to hear the familiar story in a different way. The holy family did not fit in either. Leaving Nazareth, they were without a home or a synagogue, without friends or family. They were pilgrims on a journey.
When I heard the Christmas drama as a story of pilgrimage and social dislocation, I began to think about my vocational disorientation differently. What if I could receive my feelings of melancholy and displacement as a form of spiritual pilgrimage? What if, rather than leading others toward holiness, my calling at Christmas was to deepen my own spiritual life?
What if the yearning in my soul was less about a pulpit and professional ministry and more about my own desire for God, less about public proclamation and more about private prayer, less about disorientation and more about discipleship, less about gifts to be given to others and more about the hidden gifts God may be giving to me?
I slowly came to realize that welcoming my vocational vertigo was a path to deepen my personal holiness and an avenue to strengthen my ministry. The Christmas story of pilgrimage, the pilgrimage God makes from heaven to earth in Jesus to make his home with us so that we might be made at home with God, and the pilgrimage the holy family makes from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and from Bethlehem to Egypt, offers rich emotional and theological imagery for ministry throughout the year.
Pastoral work on a college campus is about learning to shepherd a parade of pilgrims. Students come from somewhere and are going to somewhere. The campus is but a layover, a blip -- exceedingly influential, but still a blip -- in the trajectory of their lives.
On the frenetic journey of their emerging adulthood, many are struggling with their conception of themselves and of God, with their faith, with the meaning of home.
These anxieties unearth big questions: Will I ever find my place in the world? Will I find someone to spend my life with? Will I discover a purpose worthy of my deepest beliefs and passions? What are my deepest beliefs and passions? Do I have a home? If I run off to a far country, will I find my way back? And so forth.
A significant part of ministry on a college campus is helping students learn to welcome the pilgrim way, to grow in grace and trust in the Spirit’s work, and to trust themselves enough to receive an unknown future as a place of God’s abundance rather than scarcity. Much of my job is helping them understand that the fragmentation they feel during their young adult years is something everyone experiences -- and is a means of learning to live by grace alone.
I often say, “Maybe your sense of disorientation and spiritual emptiness is actually a hidden gift. Perhaps that’s precisely the place where the pilgrim Jesus is at work in you, and thus where you might find your peace in God.” My students are often comforted and surprised by this insight. “How do you know?” they ask.
“I learn that lesson every year at Christmas,” I say.
Read more from Craig T. Kocher »
UPCOMING ONLINE COURSE: SOURCING INNOVATION
Chances are good that your institution needs to change in some way if it's to thrive (or even survive). You know it. You embrace the idea. But you don't know what to do, or even where to begin.Join visual anthropologist and filmmaker Marlon Hall and a community of other Christian leaders for this five-week online course (January 30 - March 1, 2017) as we move step-by-step through the process of learning from a community, which is the foundational step to engage in innovative ministry.
Sourcing Innovation will provide you with the skills to lead innovation to improve the common life. You will learn to examine your community to determine:
Where you want to engage;
With whom you want to engage;
How to develop meaningful partnerships with those people; and
What to do with what you learn.
Learn more and register »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
The Wisdom of the Seasons by Charles M. OlsenThe church year is often seen as a framework for church programs, but well-known Alban author Charles Olsen shows readers how it can be a prism through which congregations more deeply understand their own stories. By weaving together our narratives and those of Christian tradition, a congregation can clarify its identity, grow in wisdom, and discover a new vision and ministry. Olsen draws parallels between the church seasons and practices of spiritual formation -- letting go, naming and celebrating God's presence, and taking hold. He shows us how these movements are expressed in the three major cycles of the church year -- Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Focusing on communal narratives, he presents a process for telling a story and forming a corporate memory of the story, and then deepening and reflecting on it by exploring the season of the church year that captures its character.
Learn more and order the book »
Follow us on social media:
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
-------
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment