Postscript: St. Paul's new presence in cyberspace

New St. Paul's parishioner and fellow book study grouper, Don Anderson, has bravely undertaken the task of revamping our website, and would love to know your thoughts. Well-wishes, comments, and the gently-worded suggestion are all welcome.

You can check out a trial version of the website here.

The Pentecost people

St. Paul's celebrated Pentecost Sunday 2007 with a baptism. Like birthdays, baptisms are occasions not only to celebrate with a new brother or sister in Christ, but to remind ourselves that we too once were at the font, whether held by older, loving arms, or guided there by our own two feet. At every baptism, we renew the vows that we made or that someone who loves us made for us, to strive -- despite our failures, because of our failures -- to live into those promises that make up the Christian life. I sometimes wonder if at every single birth every baby were given some words uttered on her/his behalf that could be read each year on that person's birthday we might put into language the singular specialness that we can only begin to understand and marvel at with candles and cake.

It seems fitting that our book study group ends on Pentecost, with a baptism and our recitation and renewal of our own baptismal vows. Baptism reminds us that Christianity is always beginning, always starting anew, which make this well-worn journey of faith so fresh and enlivening to every person to walks it, each generation who sets out to know the heart of God. Sometimes that path is well-trodden, but sometimes, like now, the trail isn't well-marked and we might feel like we don't quite know which way to go. Maybe we've taken the wrong turn and should go back and take that other road that seemed so much easier to take. Or maybe we can't go back. It's getting dark, and a little cold, and please God help me find my way of out these desert places because this journey is more confusing that I'd thought. Where are you?

Our book study group ended with a baptism, which is a promise. It's not a promise of anything more than what God promises us over and over: I'm with you, don't be afraid. Our group concluded last Thursday with this realization, which is really a reminder, that what to imagine and claim Christianity for the rest of us, in this, the 21st century, it's more important why we believe than what we believe. And why we believe is because God is with us, and we're with each other as we journey through the life of faith with no markers of our certainty.

Over 7 weeks, we have talked about our hopes and dreams for the church not so much by waxing about the sundry programmatic possibilities that St. Paul can offer -- certainly, we can continue to worry about that. But in the midst of our anxieties and imaginations, we listened to where we've come from, why we came here, and what difference God has made in our lives that is enough evidence to know that God's still making a difference in our lives today and tomorrow. We listened to each other's stories and through that listening we heard God whispering to us, each and every time: this is my beloved, listen to her, listen to him! And while we differed over what we believed, we knew that each person had reasons why she or he believes, and it was that why that kept us coming together.

The church of the future, no matter what it looks like, will still be about relationship, with God, with one another. We're not coming to church just because it's what our parents did, but we are coming to church because our ancestors did. We come to church because the story of God search for humanity through the ages is still happening, and our seven-week journey together bears witness to that most ancient and yet most palpable reason for doing church: where two or three are gathered, Christ is with us, two or three IS Christ. The Lord be with you. And also with you.

We ended our group on the eve of Pentecost, the culmination of Easter, and we emerge from that room over in the Gooden Center praying that we can be a Pentecost people to the world. And how do we do this? Do we need more money? Maybe. Do we need better programs? Probably. Most of all, we become a Pentecost people by first sitting down with someone, a stranger, someone who DOESN'T speak the language with which you are familiar and ask him or her: tell me your story, in your own language, and I'll try to share with you mine in your language too. To live the life of Pentecost, which is the culmination of Easter, is to risk the Spirit's taking us to places we didn't even imagine was possible, to people we might rather avoid. To be a Pentecost people is to be relentlessly relational, because God is in the relation. God asks us, "Men of Galilee, People of St. Paul's, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? Go to Jerusalem, go into Ventura, go into the world, because that's where my Spirit is."

We end this group with a baptism on Pentecost, which is really a promise to God and a promise by God. What God is challenging us to do now, and tomorrow, to live into the life of Christ that we were reminded of today through our renewal and in our promise to uphold the journey of our new brother in Christ, is to show the world what it means to be Christian, and why that makes a difference. "See how they love one another," said people of the ancient world of the Roman empire of those who were called Christian. Perhaps our greatest challenge to be a Pentecost people, today and tomorrow, to show why we believe what we believe is to live out a life of faith that makes others exclaim, "See how they love one another and everybody else!"

Thank you for reading. Thank you to those who attended the group so diligently, and thank you for being part of this journey, as it closes in this form and emerges in a new, heretofore unimagined iteration. Happy Easter and happy Pentecost.

On worship

Apologies for my less frequent posting, and apologies again for today's brief post. I'll try to write more this weekend.

But just to get us going, on the question that Bass poses for us with regard to worship:

Can you share a transformative worship experience? What was it like? What did you experience?

Closer to God's heart: diversity and justice

This week's focus on diversity and justice have been very much on the tip of our collective minds in the Episcopal Church, so much so that we might be tempted to forget that diversity and justice are not so much goals to accomplish but rather as journeys that lead us ever closer to the heart of God.

We can begin to name the programmatic things we can do to facilitate diversity and/or justice (and sometimes diversity and justice complement one another, but not always), but before we do, I wonder if we might think through the the path that God would have us walk. If we believe that all persons are made in God's image, then what would God have us do when we encounter the image of God in every person we meet? To what extent then are diversity and justice not "things" to have, but rather capacities through which our journey reflects and models Christ's?

It's in that spirit that I post today's set of discussion questions:

Bass speaks on p. 170 of justice not as a program, political platform, or denominational position, but rather a “pilgrimage of the beloved community” to facilitate the reign of God. What journey of justice are you on? What journey of justice is St. Paul’s on? How do we express this journey of justice to others?

Diversity “is the active construction of a boundary-crossing community, a family bound not by blood but by love, that witnesses to the power of God’s healing the world” (148). What kinds of boundaries has St. Paul’s crossed in the name of love? What kinds of boundaries do you hope we can cross?

What does inclusion mean to you? Are there limits to inclusivity?

How might St. Paul’s embody Desmond Tutu’s ubuntu theology (151-3)? What might happen if we embraced ubuntu theology as a guiding principle? What hopes emerge? What fears emerge?

We aren't discerning alone

As we continue to ponder and pray whither church, we might take heart by reminding ourselves that churches all over the country, big and small, are engaging in similar conversations. The following article from the New York Times talks of one of the biggest, whose concerns are no more or no less than ours.

May 5, 2007
On Religion
Riverside Takes On the Task of Rebuilding a Church
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Around the grand Gothic edifice of Riverside Church in Manhattan, a structure designed to evoke authority and permanence, there rises a scaffolding of tube pipes and raw boards. Its purpose is to allow workers to repoint the building’s stone facade, but it serves also as a handy metaphor for the paradox of Riverside, the capital of a theological movement that has been slowly deteriorating.

Since being founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1930, Riverside has often and justifiably been likened to the Vatican for America’s mainstream Protestants, the theologically and politically liberal segment of the faith. The church’s first minister, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and successors like William Sloane Coffin, used Riverside as a national pulpit from which to preach social justice, civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, among other causes.

Yet now, as Riverside prepares to search for a new senior minister for only the sixth time in its history, mainstream Protestants are struggling to reverse a decades-long pattern of losing numbers, vitality and influence to their evangelical Protestant competitors. Between 1990 and 2000 alone, mainstream denominations like the Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches and the United Church of Christ lost 5 percent to 15 percent of their members, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Riverside is interdenominational but is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Baptist Church

The confluence of challenge, opportunity and visibility, then, makes Riverside’s selection of a new leader important not only for the 26 million adherents of mainline Protestantism but also for the shape of American religion as a whole.

“Any minister who occupies the pulpit at Riverside will have a built-in audience of hearers, both in this large and significant church and far beyond,” said the Rev. James Hudnut-Beumler, a Presbyterian minister who is dean of the divinity school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “There’s already the kind of interest that one has when network news anchors change.”

Riverside’s most recent senior minister, the Rev. James A. Forbes, smashed the church’s color barrier by becoming its first African-American pastor. In his 18 years at the helm, which will end with his official retirement on June 1, he also succeeded in making Riverside an all-too-rare example of an integrated congregation, moreover one in which whites in the flock followed a black shepherd rather than the other way around.

Like several of his renowned forebears, however, Mr. Forbes ran into opposition on administrative issues from factions of the highly educated, highly involved congregation. One group of members sued in New York State Supreme Court, ultimately unsuccessfully, to have the church’s finances put in the hands of a receiver, alleging mismanagement of millions of dollars.

What is undeniably true is that Riverside, beyond its religious impact, is a large, complex operation, with 2,700 members, a $14 million annual budget and a paid staff of 130. As much as Riverside has traditionally sought a public intellectual and world-class preacher in its pastor, it arguably needs someone who also has experience at overseeing a large organization, like a megachurch. Mr. Forbes’s background was as a professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary.

The selection process has just begun, with a 21-member search committee being put forward on May 20 for approval by the congregation. The full process is likely to take 12 to 18 months, said Dr. Billy Jones, the chairman of Riverside’s governing council and a proposed member of the search committee.

At this early stage, the most notable aspect of the search is the dearth of names being bandied about. If Riverside wanted to break the sex line, it could look to the Rev. Vashti McKenzie, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, or the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook, former president of the Hampton Ministers Conference. Both of these women are African-American, as are two prospective male candidates — the Rev. Calvin O. Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and the Rev. Michael Livingston, outgoing president of the National Council of Churches.

“Compared to Bill Coffin or Harry Emerson Fosdick, neither Jim Forbes nor anyone else in mainline Protestantism cuts that kind of profile,” said Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford. “Who are the big dogs today? It’s true in Catholicism, too, for that matter. Where’s the Spellman or the Cushing? The religious leaders worth listening to have to make the case for themselves — running their own organization, writing books, being in the media.”

By Mr. Silk’s definition, the ideal candidate for Riverside’s pulpit might be the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the religious social-action group Sojourners and author of such books as “God’s Politics.” Unfortunately for Riverside, and revealingly for mainline Protestantism’s dilemma, this leading liberal minister happens to be an evangelical Christian.

Dr. Jones said that Mr. Forbes’s successor must be “someone who fits with the congregation’s religious and spiritual philosophy, serving God through social justice.” Geoffrey Martin, also nominated to the search committee, said the congregation itself must “face up to the fact that Riverside has had a fairly public reputation of irritating our last two senior ministers to the point they got exasperated.”

In the wider world, events having nothing overtly to do with mainline Protestantism present Riverside’s next leader with a propitious opportunity. The increasing unpopularity of the Iraq war, combined with the Democrats’ recapture of Congress, has restored energy to American liberal groups that had been on the defensive for much of the last quarter-century. In more specifically Christian terms, evangelical conservatives last fall found themselves uncharacteristically on the losing side of a major election.

“Riverside’s next minister needs to make a coherent case for liberal Protestantism, and that’s been missing for a long time,” said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College and an ordained Episcopal minister. “You need someone who has solid theological understanding and can articulate it speaking to a popular audience.

“The standard conservative criticism,” Professor Ballmer said, “is that the mainline Protestants lost their theological moorings, that they got too far out ahead of the people in the pews. But I think the larger issue is that they were not communicating to the masses.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Hospitality as commitment

We seem for some reason to keep thinking that being hospitable is about being nice to people. But once again, as we remember the stories of Jesus, we're reminded that Jesus wasn't so nice to the people toward whom he extended hospitality. He didn't "like" the people he welcomed; he loved them, and from that love began a relationship that wasn't "nice" but gave those he touched a meaning and value beyond imagination.

Anglicans Online, an independent website dedicated to all things Anglicana, reminded me of this idea of hospitality not as a set of gestural niceties but as something vigorous and demanding. Hospitality that compels us not to like "strangers" but to love them, and in doing so become committed to them.

An excerpt:

"Recently while worshipping away from home we were at a charming Episcopal church high in the mountains of the Western USA. It was full to bursting with worshippers; the ushers set up several rows of folding chairs after the pews filled, and there were folks standing in the back even then*. It was quite exhilarating to see an Episcopal church with standing room only. The worship service was very well done, though we could have lived without the hymn praising 'loud boiling test tubes'.

"In front of the church, we had noticed the flagpole shown in the photograph [above]. After the service we went to socialize at coffee hour, and found someone whom we felt comfortable asking about the flags. This chap's answer was

'Our former bishop hated inclusiveness, and during one visit he said to the rector 'Dammit, why don't you just put a flag out front saying 'Fags welcome here!'?'. The rector replied 'Because we didn't think of it. Thanks for the idea.'"


Read it all here.

Your "God-question"

Diana Butler Bass makes a crucial distinction between what she calls "I-questions," those questions that derive from and are driven by the "need for self-actualization and a sense of entitlement," and those questions she calls "God-questions."

"God-questions," as Bass calls them, shifts the focus away from what individuals want of and from the church, and toward "what God wants of" the church and its people.

So where and how has God been in your life this week, this month, this year? What does God's question have you do?

What "God-question," rather than an "I-question," do you think God has you asking of St. Paul's? What is God asking you of and for this church that is beyond even your idea of what church is or should be?

Who is the stranger, who is our neighbor?

There is no person in the Christian story who more exemplifies a life of relentless hospitality than Jesus. Whether offering welcome and sharing a meal with those marginalized by the forces of domination (the sick, the widow, the "sinner") or even those complicit with that domination (Zaccheus), Jesus preached not a story of God's reign, the kingdom of God as conditionally accessible. Rather, he preached, the kingdom of God is at hand. It is here. If only we have eyes and ears to see and hear. He welcomed those who doubted him, those who betrayed him, those who sought him out for selfish reasons, those who wanted him dead. The only people he cast aspersion on were those who did not do to the least of these, those who defiled his Father's temple by placing conditions on who could enter into God's sacred space. Even then, I suspect, he still would've had dinner with these folks too, though his steely eyes would have unnerved them and me.

Jesus relentlesly pursued and welcomed the stranger and called him or her his neighbor. So it's perhaps worth asking: who is the stranger in our community? What would hospitality look like in our context, to make strangers into neighbors and even friends? In what manner should hospitality be extended? Is there a limit to our hospitality? What would it take to demonstrate the kind of hospitality that Jesus models for us?

When were you a stranger?

The first element that Bass identifies as a quality of a thriving church is that of hospitality, what Rose in an earlier blog specifies as "radical hospitality."

For me, radical hospitality is about the welcoming of those whom we wouldn't expect, or even hope, to bring into our midst, to offer those the love of God through food, through fellowship, through the messy acknowledgment of our shared humanity, our shared createdness in God's image.

It's often the case that one realizes the profundity of radical hospitality when one imagines or remembers its opposite: moments when one was **not** welcome, when one was made to feel a stranger and never more than that. I would venture to guess that all of us have felt or experienced this at some point in our lives.

So when were you a stranger? What did you experience? And how did you feel remaining the stranger?

I'm asking for painful memories, I know. But God calls us to name our pain, to bring these pains to God, and see how God's healing of our pain transforms us to heal the pains of others. I hope that you call upon God's courage as you remember this pain, one that is so palpably felt individually and one that is almost certainly understood by all in different but no less painful contexts.

Three years ago, Julie and I visited some friends in the Bay Area. These friends are well-known political activists, and happen to be chummy with someone whose activism has made her something of a celebrity. This "celebrity" is also an academic, and on the weekend that we visited our friends, this person threw a party (there was a conference going on at the time). My friends suggested that we come along. I was giddy. This celebrity is someone whose books I've read, whose story I've admired, and who continues to be for me a beacon of justice-making.

I didn't know many people at this party, so I stayed close to Julie and one of the friends who invited us. About an hour into it, someone that I did know, a fellow academic in my field, walked into the house where the party was held. He did his obligatory hugs and faux kisses with the hosts, and "worked the room." Then he saw me. He did a double-take, and then, trying to recompose himself, asked in as nice a voice he could muster, "What are you doing here?" I fumbled an explanation of how I came to the party, and why I "belonged." He said, "Ah," and then moved on.

For him, it was probably an innocuous question. For me, it was a moment of humiliation. I was a young, very nervous, very insecure, newly-minted academic, and with five words someone was able to insinuate that I somehow didn't belong in this special place, this special event. I have known this person for years in professional contexts, but in this more intimate space, his question -- what are you doing here? -- was not so much a question as it was a demand. It was a question that demanded conditions for belonging, conditions for welcoming. It was one moment of many in which I saw with such clarity how easy it is for communities of whatever purpose to set up rules and hierarchies that give those on the "inside" value and those outside the status of, at best, tolerated visitor and, at worst, interloper.

I've experienced this before, and in more painful ways. But what made me so extraordinarily sad that night was that (1) I thought I was in the company of people who didn't ascribe to such conditional hospitality and (2) I thought that I'd earned my stripes to belong and (3) I think I actually believed, in some ways, in the very system of values that was at the moment benignly excluding me.

I can't say that I haven't committed this sin of conditional hospitality, but that memory of not "being a stranger," but rather **becoming** a stranger has stayed with me since then, and it animates the way I try to act in my professional life and beyond.

Mine is such an innocuous story. It's a silly one, really. But it's through those moments of remembrance oneself as a "stranger in the land" that one can begin to understand more fully the radical love that comes from God's hospitality and the one God calls us to live into.

As you think of your experience of being the stranger, ask yourself then: how would or did Jesus heal your feeling of being the stranger? What would he do to make you feel welcome?

Something about that Jesus

As we begin to move into the chapters of Bass's book that detail some of the qualities that make for a thriving church, here's a short essay by the renowned Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Leaving Church.

I think it's a good way to begin to see what hospitality means as followers of Jesus. Here's an excerpt:

"When I listen to the most devoted followers of Jesus, they tell me what it costs to love unconditionally, to forgive 70-times-seven, to offer hospitality to strangers, and to show compassion for the poor. These are essential hallmarks of Jesus' ministry, which no followers of his can ignore. At the same time, they are acts of divine mercy that disciples can feel good about, while helping others feel better too. Those who follow Jesus' lead in these areas tend to be honored in their communities, at least as long as they are judicious about whom they choose to love without condition and as long as they stop short of political activity on behalf of the strange or the poor.

"What I hear less about from Jesus' followers is what it costs to oppose the traditions of the elders, to upset pious expectations of what a child of God should say or do, to subvert religious certainty, and to make people responsible for their own lives. Yet all of these are present in his example too."

Read it all here.

What selection spoke to you?

A simple question. Answer as short or as long as you wish.

What passage in Bass's book reverberated in you? How and why? What moment in the first four chapters do you want other people to read or revisit?

A mother's silence

Diana Butler Bass once again provides us with her gift of wisdom, as she reflects on this week's tragedies in Virginia.

As we read her book together, we also continue to engage the world and its deep sadnesses; her vision of Christianity asks for nothing less. So this is an invitation to reflect on your reading of the first four chapters of Bass's book, as you and I struggle and struggle to engage the souls lost this week, those that lost their way a long time ago, and those who continue to search for answers.

An excerpt from Bass's blog:

"Other than being the mother of one of the murdered students, I can imagine nothing worse than being the mother of the murderer, a murderer who committed suicide. How isolated she must be. She, too, is grieving, mourning the loss of her only son, mourning her dreams for him, and mourning her memories of his childhood. She has little – except confusion, guilt (however misplaced that may be) and questions."

You can read the whole thing here.

The failure and necessity of words

This isn't meant to distract from our telling each other our stories. Please continue to share. But we also need to share in collective grief.

A student of mine said in class today, as we reflected on the horrific tragedy in Virginia, that he simply couldn't begin to understand how to begin to make sense of what happened. Sadly, we've been witness to too many of these kinds of acts that seems so absurdly senseless but that are also so painfully palpable.

For me, it's at times like these that Thomas's words of doubt in yesterday's Gospel reading seem most appropriate.

I cannot begin to know how those charged with helping people make sense begin to help those who want sense out of this tragedy. All I can do is to pray, tell God I'm distraught and angry, and see if God responds.

So, let's each send to God and to the students, faculty, staff, and their families of Virgina Tech their prayers. Father Jake begins us off:

Almighty God, Father of mercies and giver of comfort: Deal
graciously, we pray, with all who mourn; that, casting all
their care on you, they may know the consolation of your
love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

What is your prayer? We'd like to pray with you.

Eyes Wide Open

I had eagerly anticipated our first meeting. I intentionally - and with great excitement - arranged and rearranged household/work/childcare responsibilities to create this time for collective discussion and individual thought. It is sometimes difficult to claim time for myself, and especially to claim time for something that is not activity-driven. I was not disappointed that I took this time...I was deeply touched with meeting people - some of whom I've known for years - and the "eyes wide open" sharing that occured last night.

My journey of faith: I am a cradle Episocopal, baptized at the Church of the Holy Trinity in West Chester, PA. Holy Trinity was established in 1835, and I always loved the physical space. I was born with a passion for history, and as a child, visited many historical places, including the churches where our founding fathers and mothers worshipped. (I continue this practice as an adult, every chance I get, with my daughter). My early childhood was spent in some very "high" churches, with white gloves, boys choirs, etc. When we moved from the East Coast to Southern California, we stopped attending church as regularly, but worshipped frequently at the old St. Paul's Cathedral in Los Angeles. I vividly remember attending midnight mass on Christmas there: that space was sacred, and it was a deeply felt loss when that structure was condemned after the Sylmar earthquake in 1971.

My father was also raised in the Anglican faith, and my daughter is at least a sixth-generation Episcopal. (Earlier family members were members of the Dutch Reformed and Catholic churches). My mother's family is Southern Baptist, but she became an Episcopal as a teenager when she married my father. When she and my father divorced sixteen years later, my mother remarried and coverted to Judaism. I learned a great deal about Judaism through Friday sabbaths, participation in Seders, etc. The small rural community we moved to did not have an Episcopal church, so I attended a community church. The attraction: a really super youth group focused around a music ministry. This was a tiny church; we worshipped with little liturgical structure in a low-slung building in a large multi-purpose room, sitting on folding chairs. I liked to visit other churches, often attending the Pentecostal church with my best friend's mother, or the Catholic church with a friend's family, and during summers, visiting Baptist churches in the South. In a very chaotic and dysfunctional family life, I learned a great deal about families (and church families) by being a spiritual nomad and observing. I learned that religion can support or oppress, give wing to spirit, or squash it entirely.

I connect to my church experience through liturgy and music. I have my own hymnal and Book of Common Prayer, and also serve as the steward for those that belonged to my father, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. I have spent years reading the hymnal (the hymnal is a great reference document about church and cultural history, and through it one can chart all sorts of histories: British, American, the reformation, cultural history, etc.). I like to offer prayer in song; the Doxology was the first song I learned and the prayer I offer most often. We sang it every Sunday when I was a child; we don't sing it nearly enough now.

I returned to the Episcopal church as a young adult, and began attending St. Paul's sporadically in 1989. In 1991, I joined, and quickly became very active in the church, participating in the choir, on the Vestry and School Board, in the HIV/AIDS ministry, etc. I've also arranged flowers, taught Sunday School, organized the Posada, and prepared the Parish's newsletter, at various times during my tenure at the church. I worked with Fr. Kahler to develop and implement a Lay Leadership Institute at St. Paul's about 12 years ago that was very successful, and which I enjoyed tremendously. I also led a study group on simplicity. Our Daisy and Brownie Girl Scout troop met at St. Paul's before migrating across the street to Loma Vista School. I have also been a member of the Daughters of the King.

My daughter was baptized at the church in 1996. As my siblings and their children have not stayed in the Episcopal tradition, this was a very important event for my family, and we talked a lot about our childhood church experience. In the last few years, as my responsibilites outside the church have increased, I've focused my volunteer time here at St. Paul's on child-centered activities.

Becoming a parent has made me more anxious about the prospects and failures of Christianity in general. Sometimes, I think my eyes are too wide open. While I am a real optimist, I also can't help seeing where I myself fail - so, so often, many times daily - and where I wish society would have its eyes more wide open, more often. I worry most about our patterns of consumption, and the distribution of resources in our society. We don't recycle well - we throw away too much plastic, and more importantly, we throw away too many people.

Last night, a comment was made about the number of homeless reported in the County. My response was that the figure was very under-reported. Those of us who live in midtown Ventura, where our church is located, know this to be true. We only have to shop at Vons on Borchard/Thompson to see how the homeless population has swelled in the community in the last few years. The population has not only increased in size, but has migrated and become more visible community-wide. As the river bottom has been effectively cleared of its homeless population, many of these people have landed in midtown. They have formed small communities of their own; a number of them have become familiar to me. One man in particular, has carved out "employment" for himself by taking care of the shopping carts at Vons. He has clearly reached some sort of understanding with the management there; I don't know, but I suspect they provide him with food and other items he needs. I used to find him rather intimidating, but as he has felt a sense of purpose about corraling carts, I perceive him to be friendlier.

As I traverse midtown several times throughout the day, in car and on foot, I have become familiar with a number of the homeless or marginalized in our community (I'd say close to two dozen are recognizable to me now) and I am now familiar with their orbits through that part of town. I try to keep my eyes wide open to them, and part of my daily ritual is to offer a prayer for them as we pass. Some are clearly mentally ill, and I often lament the lack of resources available for them. (And Jim and Lou, I have never failed to think of your work with AMI, and how faithful and impactful your walk has been. Thank you for that grace, which I've observed and taken in for so many years).

A small group of people living in cars and rusted out RVs reside in a parking lot behind the Target shopping center on Main Street. They often leave the site early in the morning to avoid being rousted by the businesses there, but they find their way back. There are others who sleep in their vehicles in the alley behind Telegraph Road at Mills. A couple of the homeless men who used to frequent the Vons center have found employment holding the sandwich boards advertising the new liquor store on Main Street (near Sizzler). There is an older couple that spends part of the day (weekdays) on the corner of Borchard/Thompson with their shopping cart and sign, but they sometimes can be seen at Mills/Main (near Lowes) on the weekends. He is disabled.

There are many families at risk of homelessness in midtown, families with school-aged children overflowing the motels on Main Street and Thompson Boulevard, in the corridor bordered by Mills Road to the East and Kalorama to the West. These families crowd into motel rooms that were designed for the motoring tourist in the 1950s, when the Ventura Highway was a famous and well-traveled thoroughfare, before Highway 101 bisected our community.

Two weeks ago, I was asked by my daughter's teacher to pick up a student from her home to transport her to the school for a field trip to Catalina Island. This girl lives with several adults and three other children in a large motel room on Thompson Boulevard. They cannot afford a first and last months deposit to rent a home or apartment in Ventura, and this is the second motel they've lived in the last few months. There is no place to play, the garbage bins are overflowing, no school bus stops nearby (leading to frequent school absences), and many of the motel residents are adults who have fallen on hard times. Some are on probation, many are using drugs. It is an unsafe place for families with children to live, but where can they go?

These children attend our public schools, including Loma Vista Elementary, right across the street from St. Paul's. If you are a parent volunteer or a teacher with your eyes wide open, these children are easily recognized. They are the kids receiving their breakfast and lunch at school, are often wearing the same clothes, have frequent absences, and are often missing their homework. They are the children whose parents are unable to bring in the requisite treat to celebrate their birthday, who are unable to volunteer in the classroom, or extend an invitation to play at their home, who don't own a sleeping bag for a camping trip or overnight, and who will leap at an invitation to your house.

And, yes, this is true - these are the children who may be seen begging for money outside of Target. If your child has his or her eyes wide open, they will see this, ask you to stop the car, and get out and hug the friend. If you have your eyes wide open, you use this as a teachable moment about a variety of things. Among them: poverty is not an individual moral failing, but rather, a collective failure to be proper stewards of God's creation.

Could a church or community with its eyes wide open intentionally reach out to these people? Could a church in the right location - midtown, near the county hospital and the midtown bus transit center - make space available for nonprofits and social service agencies to provide services where their clientele now are?

Could a church and community with a larger vision utilize the former youth probation facility on Hillmont (with its meeting rooms, commercial kitchen, etc.) - and only a scant block from St. Paul's - to create a resource center for the homeless and marginalized in our community? Could a group take the former playground there - a fertile and empty lot, fenced, and now filling with weeds - and begin a community gardening effort to improve food security and provide a place to gather, engage in productive activity, build skills, and create community?

Could a church help the larger community see that the needs of our homeless and marginalized population can no longer be served through ministry/social service work on Ventura Avenue alone, be made to understand that the need has grown larger (lamentably) and that the population has diffused through the community to other places? Could a church with an incredible tradition of hospitality lead this effort and do this?

From whence you have come

Eight of us gathered this evening with not a little uncertainty about what to expect in this, the first meeting of the book study group, and not a little trepidation from your humble facilitator. But we were also filled with hope, and it is this hope that sustains us, and give us the strength to be together. In the process of 90 minutes, uncertainty and hope danced together to the music of our individual stories -- where we have come from in our journeys of faith -- and what has brought us to this place at this time.

We were invited to tell a story of our lives and how that story has led you to this church, to this study group. From there, we asked ourselves and one another: what hopes do you have of this group, and of this collective pilgrimage we are undertaking?

I'll let those in attendance share their stories, if they wish. I can only share mine.

I grew up in a conservative Korean immigrant family and faith community. My father is a minister in the Reformed tradition, and church was by most measures our "family business." When I was old enough to help, I did, just as thousands of children of immigrants serve as unpaid labor to support the stores their parents keep open for long hours 6 or 7 days a week. In college, I returned home every weekend to play guitar for the youth group.

It was also in college that Adam, my roommate who is nominally Jewish asked me pointedly one night: "So what you're telling me is that because I'm not a Christian, I'm going to hell?" I told my roommate and my friend, without hesitation and with my eyes directly into his: "Yes." We remained friends after that encounter, but our relationship was never the same after that conversation.

That episode has stayed with me all my life. It was, in many ways, a turning point in my faith journey, when I realized that I was using my faith to consign my friend to a group of people who don't belong, who aren't part of God's family. I cannot begin to express the deep shame that I feel now in saying this to my friend, in a signficant but small way breaking his heart and breaking the heart of God. Years later, I asked Adam for forgiveness, but I can still see the wounded eyes of my roommate.

I needed to find a faith community that could affirm my Christian upbringing but also give me the language to say that others were welcome to God's table, that indeed all were welcome, and that neither I nor my faith community nor anyone else could say that someone was outside God's love. I needed to find in Christianity a faith story that said to me, "yes, Jim, your faith is absolutely legitimate, and everyone else's journey to God is legitimate." I needed to find a Christianity that lived into the idea that God's love is a gift from God alone, not one conditionally dispensed based on a set of affirmations to certain beliefs and held back to those who didn't assent to these same dogmatic statements. And most of all, I needed to live into a Christianity that said that others' journey didn't dilute my own, but actually gave it more meaning because God called me by name, and called Adam by name as well.

As a well-known group of musicians once said, I still haven't found what I'm looking for but I'm on my way. And that's why I'm here, at St. Paul's, and in this study group. My Christian journey is not about knowing what home is, knowing what my faith is, but ever discovering what home is becoming, what my faith is becoming. And I find that the best way to discover this becoming is in hearing the stories of others, how others are in their own particular ways striving to find the voice of God in their lives. That's what keeps me coming back to church, through the doors that welcome me for who I am and welcome anyone and everyone on their own journey of faith.

What do I hope for? Simply put: to do church differently than even I could imagine, to find community in God's children, amongst people whom I once believed deserved hell, but now understand that theirs is the Kingdom of God, even before mine.

So, to reiterate again: what brings you to this blog? Where have you come from? What story has brought you to this place and this time? And what do you hope for, now that you're here? Whatever your story, welcome. We're glad that you're joining us on this pilgrimage into the heart of God.

More Book Study Blog logistics

See below the preliminary reading schedule for the reading group. Keep in mind that this is not a rigid syllabus; rather, take this as a guidepost to help you keep up with readings.

April 19, 2007: Chs. 1-4

April 26, 2007: Chs. 5 and 6

May 3, 2007: Chs. 7-9

May 10, 2007: Chs. 10 and 11

May 17, 2007: Chs. 12-14

May 24, 2007: Chs. 15-epilogue


Two more items for your consideration:

1. Blogging: if you would like to blog, please email me. Anyone can comment on individual blog entries, but you must be "invited" to write blogs proper. So if you'd like to be a blogger and not simply a commenter, email me at leejkj at gmail dot com. (I write out the punctuation to help avoid spam on the blog.) I'll be happy to invite you as a fellow blogger.

2. Book: if you would like to join in on the reading, but find that you cannot afford to buy the book, please email me. I don't want anyone to not participate because of lack of funds.

Soon: our opening questions for discussion. Stay tuned.

Another set of ground rules

I've shamelessly plagiarized these ground rules for our blog from The Discussion Blog. I think these might serve as another very useful set of guidelines:

1. Be Yourself: Don't let intimidation or inspiration deter you from being the person you were created to be.

2. Respect Others: Our honest explorations will only go as far as our mutual respect for one another.

3. Seek Embodiment: Truth is a tricky thing, it requires that we live it out in order to be a true "learner". We are not interested in defending points of view that we ourselves are not willing to experiment with in our very own lives.

4. Avoid Debates: By putting yourself at the mercy of other people's points of view you offer yourself the gift of learning. Debates happen when both sides are only interested in defending their own perspectives.

5. Try Dialogue: When the "discovery of truth" becomes the highest aim of the discussion then we are able to move beyond labeling "who is right" and "who is wrong", and we achieve true dialogue.

6. Check Integrity: At all costs please check to make sure what you are reporting is "factual" and not some "falsehood". Nobody likes being falsely accused of anything.

7. No Vulgarity: We prefer a cleaner and more effective form of communication without extraneous expletives being used.

Remember!

Our first meeting of the study group meets tomorrow, Thursday, April 12th, from 5:30 until 7 p.m. in the Gooden Center at St. Paul's. Hope to see you then!

Welcome, officially, to the St. Paul's reading group

Hi all.

If you're new to this blog, welcome. If you've been trolling this site for a while, welcome back. And if you're new to church, you are most welcome here.

While the ostensible focus of this study group is Diana Butler Bass's book Christianity For the Rest of Us, this group and this blog are really designed for people in the parish and beyond to share their own faith journeys, how theirs intersects with the story of St. Paul's, and how this journey together might transform both themselves and the church.

It should go without saying, but it bears worth repeating: this is not a judging community. We lift up all stories as emblems of God's work in our lives; God is not limited to membership or doctrine, but works wherever God wants. So we honor God's overflowing spirit and all of us who manifest that abundance, however it looks.

With this in mind, I'd like to post a few ground rules for this blog. These "rules" are designed to help each of us engage one another as children of God, not as targets of particular ideologies or theologies. I hope these are not seen as restrictive, but rather as frameworks and opportunities through which participants can feel both safe and challenged, and write without fear but with anticipation for full engagement.

Ok, here are a few ground rules:

1. In either a blog proper or comment to a blog, you **must** provide some kind of identificatory mark. "Anonymous" comments will not be accepted. Anyone who comments should be able to stand by them by name.

2. This is not a place for any sort of ad hominem attack. Such criticisms will not be accepted by the moderator. We are a community that challenges one another, but we will not allow anyone to question the "faith" of anyone.

3. While the book is not a prerequisite to writing, please note that many of the participants will want to exchange ideas that permeate from the book. While blogs and comments from those who haven't read the book are welcome, we hope that the conversation prompts you to READ THE BOOK! If, at a particular point, it becomes clear that someone posts without any interest in engaging from a grounding in either the book or in constructive dialogue, the moderator reserves the right not to accept blogs or comments from this person.

4. The blog is many things, but perhaps the most important quality to blogs is to imagine wildly and boldly. Dream God's dream, even if it sounds absurd. We want to hear and see how you think God's reign looks like to you. Be brave!

5. Most importantly, pray before you blog.

Greetings

Hi, Jim and Bill,

I have the book, will try to post on a regular basis, but am not sure how often I will be able to come "in person" on Thursday. I will be out of town tomorrow, but will be looking forward to hearing how things go. I would find it really helpful if you could let us(me)know how much of the book you would like us to complete each week. It will help motivate me to stay on track!!

Alleluia! The Lord is Risen!

mary+