First Covenant Church

I'll be honest, the words "spiritual disciplines" used to carry some heavy baggage with me.  First, anything with the word "discipline" in it makes me think of being punished in some way.  I picture a large school principal behind an oversized desk looking down on this tiny kid who is scared out of his or her mind.  This might be a sign more of my neuroses than anything, but I believe that discipline for most of us does not have a positive connotation.

But, we use spiritual disciplines to better commune with God, which I think it an amazing invitation as opposed to some type of punishment.  We use the disciplines not to become Christian super heroes, but to put ourselves before God and let him change us. 

As Richard Foster says in his book, Celebration of Disciplines, "A farmer is helpess to to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain.  He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain.  This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines--they are a way of sowing to the Spirit."

So, if you are a regular practitioner of the disciplines or are scared by the mere thought of words such as fasting, meditation, and simplicity come and learn how disciplines can be tools to communicate with, and be transformed by, God.

I have to say that sometimes ministry can wear you down.  It often feels that we are fighting this uphill battle where we rarely see obvious victories or the fruits of our labor.  I think this Sunday was one of those days where God gives us glimpses of the importance of our work.

First, the baptism of Mike and Emma Borrelli was a great example of God using us to help him get a hold of people's lives and transform them.  As I listened to Mike's testimony, I couldn't help but think of the many people that have played some role in their journey up to this point.  Yet, I believe that as Mike read it was us who were being blessed.

I also saw God's hand in the whole process of dealing with the money given to the church by Bethel Gould.  The meeting on Sunday was unified and, I believe, excited about how to use this money for God's work in our midst.

I think it is good to have these moments, to realize that we are being used by God as his "tool" (thanks for that metaphor Mike!). 

I believe that our church does a pretty good job of showing mercy.  Even this past Sunday a man came to the church in between services and people found out his need and met it, even missing the service (to some people this wouldn't be a huge sacrifice) to go with this man and help him with his needs.  That is mercy; meeting people's needs, feeding the starving, clothing the naked, housing the homeless. 

But this week Tammy and I (dave) are going to discuss what it means to move beyond mercy to justice.  At some point, we must not only treat the symptoms of a disease but the disease itself--we must look for what is causing the poverty, what is causing the hunger, what is causing the homelessness.

No doubt this route is riskier.  It may mean a shift in our worldviews; it may even demand something of us.  It definitely isn't cut-and-dry with easy answers. But I have come to believe that real faith is costly.  So, are we willing to go beyond mercy and seek after justice?  Come here the dialogue.

So, there are fewer things that can destroy a church so easily as congregational disunity.  It can start small, just a crack in the dam, and then the floodwalls burst, churches split, feelings are crushed, and Christians once again are seen from the outside as no different from the rest of the population.

Yet there are hundreds of ways in which we are called to unite.  We are called to be one body, we are called to reconcile our differences with each other before praising God, we are called to be salt and light that battle against injustice, not against each other.

This week we are going to discuss what this unity looks like and how to deal with the bumps along the way that come with living and working within a community of people with different views and different ideas.  We will see how the early church dealt with disunity in order to bring together people not tear them apart.  When the church is united, it is then they can go out and be the transformative agent that we are called to be.

Well, the week is finally here.  For much of the past two months we have been talking about putting our faith to action, transforming communties, and being salt and light in our neighborhoods.  This Sunday, we are going to go out in our community and do it.

This Sunday is what we are calling our Fifth Sunday Service.  We are going to meet at church at 9:00 am for some worship (about a half hour) and then leave the four walls of the church and worship through serving our community.  We have many great opportunities including being part of a worship service at Kentucky Ridge Assisted Living, cleaning up brush in East Park, Washing windows of some of the non-profit businesses in the area, singing to Alzheimer's patients at Good Shepherd, and many others.  Please come be a part of being light to River City.

We hope that you will join us, but also that this will be the first of many ways in which we seek to be a transforming power in our community as we seek to spread the love of Jesus to our neighbors.