Is A Regularly Attending Congregation A Thing Of The Past? Victor Ko in The Banner

Culture is shifting seismically and that shift is shaping the life of the local church.

Gone are the days when the majority of church members attended worship 50 out of 52 Sundays, committing themselves to the ministry and membership of their local church.

We’re witnessing a cultural phenomenon in which many church-goers with demanding careers and busy lifestyles during the week are able to attend and commit less.

So ... what are some of the reasons behind this trend?

Kid's Activities
One cultural phenomenon is the growing number of children who play sports or engage in other group activities. Many of these sporting events or extracurricular activities take place on weekends—and more and more parents are choosing their children’s sports and hobbies over church activities.

Studies show that parents get involved in their children’s sporting and hobby activities earlier—by age 5—and extend their involvement longer—until they graduate from high school.

Weekend Work
More of us are working on weekends. An increasing number of North Americans are taking their work home on weekends, trying to meet deadlines or catch up on projects. Some are simply trying to fulfill the heavy requirements of their job description. And depending on where people live and what kind of work they do, it’s not unusual for them to travel out of town for work. Some commute weekly or daily; others are required to work night and weekend shifts.

Blended and Single-Parent Families
These days, more and more blended families and single-parent families are represented in church membership. So what’s this got to do with church attendance or commitment to a local congregation? Church leaders and members alike need to realize that when parents share custody of their children, they may see them only 26 Sundays a year.

Transportation is also a factor in this equation. This is true especially in my own context. Most of the single parents in my congregation do not own a vehicle and struggle financially. Adding to this reality, the challenge of taking babies or young children on public transit during long winters is a formidable obstacle.

Self-Directed Spirituality
People in general, both inside and outside of church, are turning less to churches and clergy to help them grow spiritually. In an age when information and knowledge are ubiquitous, we can search online for just about everything, from shopping and news to health-related items. A characteristic of the postmodern mind is a decline in our trust of and reliance on institutionalized religion. Many people attempt to meet their spiritual needs all on their own, apart from the body of Christ.

One thing is certain: our culture is shifting seismically. And that shift is shaping the life of the local church.

The full article is available here

Call To Worship: God's Blessings (based on Psalm 100)

We gather to celebrate the goodness and love of God.

God is faithful and just and God's promises stand the test of time. God’s grace and mercy sustain us.
God is our source of light and life.

For all of these blessings and more, let's share our praise and thanksgiving!

Reflection and Renewal: Judging Others By How They Meet Our Needs (based on James 2:4)

God, we’re grateful that you’ve designed us for connection and relationship.  It is a wonderful reminder that your very essence is love and communion.

But we often get off track. We tend to pin all of our hopes for happiness on a person or people and we often judge people based on how they can meet our needs. When we do this, we take something that you designed and turn it into an idol.

Forgive us.

Help us to find our true joy and happiness by walking with you through our everyday lives. Help us to stay plugged into your main frame. From there, help us to bridge the distances between us, to serve other’s needs and live life at its fullest.

Amen

Benediction: Recognize and Celebrate Connection (based on Colossians 1:17)

May we have grace to trust God’s presence even when we feel alone.  May we recognize and celebrate how we are all connected to each other through God’s love and compassion.

Responsive Call To Worship: God Is Always Within and Around Us (based on 1 Corinthians 3:16)

Reader: God is gracious and merciful ...
ALL: God is full of compassion and love.
Reader: Even though we may feel alone ...
ALL: God is always within and around us.

Reader: May our hearts and souls be filled with gratitude
ALL: Let's join together and give thanks. 

Revised Lyrics and New Arrangement: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

instrumental with piano playing vocal melody parts

Revised Lyrics and New Arrangement: How Great Is God's Love For Us

instrumental with piano playing vocal melody parts

Lived Prayer - Richard Foster

I Sent You - David J Wolpe

Call To Worship: Justice, Love, Mercy (based on Amos 5:24)

God, you have told us what is required: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you.

Spirit, move us to surrender our apathy and to move into action, so that justice rolls like ocean waves.

Jesus, help us to surrender our self-centeredness so that redemption pours out like a rushing river.

Holy Trinity, make us willing to give of ourselves to your creation. Thank you for continually moving within, around, and through us through the flow of your unforced rhythms of grace.

For this, we give you praise.

Benediction: Being Like Jesus In Our Lives (based on Luke 6:27-35)

May we strive to follow Jesus' example in everything that we do.  May we challenge injustice with compassion and solidarity.  May we show inclusive love for all; welcoming those who are marginalized and dehumanized.  

Like Jesus, may we work to bring out the best in everyone and everything. 

God, Life Of The Universe - Responsive Call To Worship

Reader: God who created all of us in your image
ALL: ... fill our hearts with your love.

Reader: Spirit who breathes into all things holy breath of Life,
ALL: ... give us life in you.

Reader: Jesus, who became flesh and lived among us ...
ALL: ... give us grace for when we fail.

Reader: Loving God, Life of the universe ...
ALL: ... we give you thanks and praise.

Responsive Benediction: Being Like Jesus In Our Lives (based on Luke 6:27-35)

based on As We Leave Worship by Roger Courtney

Reader: In our lives, may we:

All: ... show love and compassion for others ...
 challenge injustice with radical love ...
forgive others ...
work to heal broken lives and broken relationships ...
and work to follow Jesus in everything we do ...

Hiroshima: The Anti-Transfiguration - Brian Zahnd

When “Little Boy” (the name given the bomb) shone like the sun over Hiroshima, thousands of little boys and girls were burned in atomic fire and poisoned by radioactive rain. The bombing of Hiroshima is the anti-Transfiguration.

70 years ago today an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Those who experienced it and lived to tell about it, all described it in similar fashion: It began with a flash brighter than the sun.

It was August 6, 1945. According to the church calendar it was also the Feast of the Transfiguration.

When Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor his face shone like the sun, and when he came down the mountain a little boy was healed. When “Little Boy” (the name given the bomb) shone like the sun over Hiroshima, thousands of little boys and girls were burned in atomic fire and poisoned by radioactive rain. The bombing of Hiroshima is the anti-Transfiguration.

The Transfiguration was a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Hiroshima was a turning point in human history. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima was the world’s first use of a weapon of mass destruction. In this seaport city of 250,000 people, 100,000 were either killed instantly or doomed to die within a few hours. Another 100,000 were injured.

When I read Hiroshima in 1972 I knew I was reading of an unspeakable evil. I knew that Auschwitz and Hiroshima were to be spoken of in the same breath. How could I not know this? I read of people with charred skin and eyes melted in their sockets. I read of fires burning with such fury that they created windstorms. I read of black radioactive rain and how those who in desperation drank it doomed themselves to an agonizing death. I read of hell on earth — for there is no other way to describe it. Dante could not have dreamt greater horrors.

The face shining brighter than the sun that saves the world is not “Little Boy” over Hiroshima or “Fat Man” over Nagasaki, but the Son of Man shining over Tabor. When Jesus was transfigured, God spoke from heaven and said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; listen to him!”

Militarists can concoct arguments to rationalize killing 200,000 civilians with two bombs. Biblicists can point to God-sanctioned killing in the Old Testament. But what does Jesus say? "Love your enemies."

Hiroshima Day and Transfiguration Day. They are the same day. Transfiguration and anti-Transfiguration. Which one will we bless?

The full article is available here

What Counts is the Spirit of Love - Henri J. Nouwen

Incarnational Christianity - Flora Slosson Wuellner

Love Is The End Game - Rachel Held Evans

Non-cooperate With Forces of Death - Father John Dear

The Bible's Questions - Frederick Buechner

Build A Fence - Rev. Art Simon of Bread for the World

American Christians: Drop The Persecution Complex - Rachel Held Evans

A spirit of fear and entitlement does more to obscure the gospel than elucidate it.

Did you hear about the pastor who was arrested for not marrying a same-sex couple? What about the publisher that got sued for refusing to censor anti-gay verses from the Bible?

Both of these stories have been exposed as fakes of course, but that didn’t keep hundreds of thousands of conservative Christians from sharing them online this week.

When I pointed out to a friend that the story he had just shared on social media wasn’t true, he replied, “well it might as well be. Christians in this country are under attack.”

The persecution complex is not based in reality.

Not only do American Christians experience complete religious freedom in this country, we also enjoy tremendous privilege. More than seventy-percent of the population identifies as Christian, as do the majority of our representatives to congress and every single U.S. president. Our churches, whose steeples dot every cityscape and small town in the land, are exempt from paying taxes.

“[Christians] are manufacturing conflicts in order to have something to rally behind,” writes Neil Carter. “It makes them feel more in touch with the early Church’s tumultuous beginnings.  But it takes a lot of smoke in mirrors."

The persecution complex minimizes the very real suffering of others.

The persecution complex blinds many American Christians to their own privilege, which then blinds them to the challenges faced by the genuinely underprivileged in this country.

In spite of shifting views on same-sex marriage, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people continue to face incredible hostility here in the U.S. and around the world, often at the hands of American Christians.

What the persecution complex suggests is that conservative Christians only care about bullying, oppression, and discrimination when they think it happens to them. If it happens to LGBT people, or to people in other religious minority groups, it is of little concern (or is tacitly supported). American Christians guard their privilege ruthlessly, even if it comes at the expense of others.

When American Christians obsess over their own perceived oppression, it becomes incredibly difficult to engage in important conversations about religious, racial, and gender privilege that are necessary for creating a more just society.  How can we begin to recognize our own privilege and the harm it can cause when it remains unchecked if we believe ourselves to be an oppressed minority?

The persecution complex obscures the teachings of Jesus 

You know who was actually persecuted for their religious beliefs?  Jews under Roman occupation in the first century.

And you know what Jesus told those Jews to do?  Pay your taxes. Give to those who ask. Do not turn people away. Love your neighbors. Love even your enemies. 

And yet right now, some American Christians think that baking a cake for a gay couple is too much to ask. A spirit of fear and entitlement does more to obscure the gospel than elucidate it.

The full article is available here

We All Need Relationship - Jeff Wiersma

"Out of selfness we grow towards selflessness."

We all know that we need relationship.  As English author G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Two is not twice one. Two is a thousand times one.”

We all want to be known fully for who we really are, and yet that’s often just what we also fear more than anything else. We have our pride after all. 

We believe the cultural myths that we can make our own way in the world, that we can fight our own battles.We often don’t want a helping hand because it threatens our false sense of self-reliance. And this is where many times we end up getting stuck.

But that’s not how we’re hardwired.

Like God, whose image we reflect (Genesis 1:26: “let US make mankind in OUR image”), we are social beings. We’re designed to give and receive love in community.

As author Frederick Buechner wrote, community is. "[h]ow we, by grace ... little by little ... become human; become whole, become truly loving. Out of selfness we grow towards selflessness."

Yes, having relationships with people can be scary and it can be thrilling, it can frustrating and it can be fulfilling, but it’s what we need.

Reflection and Renewal: May We Weep As You Weep and Love As You Love (based Isaiah 1:17)

God,

We are often preoccupied with ourselves, with what we want, and with what will make us feel comfortable. With our focus zoomed in ourselves, those who are suffering and need help are often totally off of our radar.

Remind us again of the things that you require of us; to learn to do good; to seek justice, to rescue the oppressed, to defend the orphan and to plead for the widow.

Forgive our short-sighted vision. Enable us to see this life as a gift from you to be shared. Fill our hearts with your love for all who suffer oppression, injustice, neglect and poverty, even if it means moving us beyond our comfort zones.

May we weep as you weep and love as you love. Deepen our connection with you and all that surrounds us.

Amen

Call to Worship: We Have Come Seeking (based on Psalm 34:8)

God of peace, we have come seeking. Your life-giving spirit is nourishment for our souls. We have come in search of meaning, connection, and togetherness. Help us to be open and to lean into your presence, which is always moving within and around us.

You are good. Your care and compassion know no end. For this amazing gift, we have come to give thanks together.

When Patriotism Becomes Idolatry - Zach Hunt in Relevant Magazine

There is NO space for the flag next to the bread and the cup on the altar of salvation. They are two radically opposed visions for the world.

Christians were a people who, under the threat of death, boldly professed allegiance to a kingdom that called Jesus, not Caesar is Lord. 

And yet here we are some 2,000 years later. We’ve brought the brass eagle home to dwell among us.

How far have we fallen as a Church, how lost are we in patriotic idolatry that we’re worried about offending people if we remove a symbol from our sacred space that demands our allegiance to something other than the God we’ve come there to worship?

What makes patriotism an idol in the Church, and not just bad theology or bad story telling, is that the political ideology it brings with it can push out the need for Jesus and leave no space for the Gospel.

When “Americanized Christianity” takes over and the Gospel gets refined in the fires of patriotism, the story of the empire ultimately wins out and becomes a new story of faith.

We may continue to profess allegiance to Jesus, but our lives tell a much different story, one in which the Gospel has become supplanted by American political ideology such that theology seems strangely like a political agenda. When this happens, debates begin to rage about caring for the poor, the sick and the immigrant, debates which would be incomprehensible in any other era of the Church.

When patriotism becomes an idol, the poor can become our enemies, the alien among us can become someone to be feared and the outcast can become someone we actively seek to marginalize. When patriotism becomes an idol, the “other” whom we despise is the least of these.

Because of the truly radical nature of the Gospel, there is no space for the flag next the bread and the cup on the altar of salvation. They are two radically opposed visions for the world.

We have to choose which story we are going to be a part of.

The full article is available here