The Parable of the Sower, revisited

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

Just then, a man in a black trench coat stepped out from behind a large oak tree near the place where the Sower was sowing, on the outskirts of a town called Pilot Grove, Missouri.

“Seed police!” said the man, flashing his badge. “Stop what you’re doing and give me those seeds.”

“Why?” asked the Sower?

“They’re patented by Monsanto. If you’ve saved them from a previous harvest and are re-sowing them, I’ll have to arrest you.”

And so it goes…

The Bishop’s Tale

Bishop V. Gene Robinson

He could have stayed home. And some say he should have. But Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire (who grew up as a Kentucky Disciple) chose to travel to the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, to make a point: that gays are part of the Anglican Communion, and won’t be wished away or locked back in the closet.

Robinson was told by the Anglican Communion not to come, and he’s not ‘officially’ participating. Instead, he decided to go to Canterbury and make himself available to those who want to meet him in person. Even if they oppose his election as bishop on grounds that he’s openly gay and in a long-term relationship (his partner is traveling with him too).

To be fair, the Anglican Communion asked Robinson’s most vocal opponents, who are threatening a split, to stay home too.

Robinson will be available in the conference’s exhibit hall to meet with people (perhaps as sad a commentary on his exclusion as anything: i.e. “Come See the Real Live Gay Bishop!!”) He’s been invited to preach before and after the conference, and will be traveling in Scotland afterwards.

On Sunday, he was preaching at a church in Putney, England, when the service was interrupted by a man waving a motorcycle helmet and shouting “Repent!” and “Heretic!” Robinson writes about this experience in his blog, Canterbury Tales from the Fringe. He is also doing a video blog from Lambeth called The Gene Pool.

Yesterday he attended a screening of For the Bible Tells Me So, Daniel Karslake’s documentary (reviewed by DisciplesWorld, log-in required) that includes interviews with Robinson, his family, and other glbt persons and their families in the wider church.  Disciples minister Steve Kindle, founder of Clergy United for the Equality of Homosexuals, is also featured in the film.

Bethany Lowery’s India blog

Bethany Lowery, who interned for DisciplesWorld last year and is a student at Disciples Divinity House at the University of Chicago, is spending 10 weeks in India studying the Church of North India. She’s having quite the adventure - in her very frank blog posts she shares wonderful discoveries about India along with difficulties with travel and with adjusting to a new culture

This particular post gives some of the background on her reasons for going to India.

Bethany is also the daughter of General Minister and President Sharon Watkins and Lexington Theological Seminary’s interim  dean, Rick Lowery.

DisciplesWorld writer named editor of United Church News

Rev. Gregg Brekke

DisciplesWorld contributing writer Gregg Brekke will soon be the new editor of United Church News, the bi-monthly newspaper of the United Church of Christ, and news director for the denomination’s website. Gregg is currently the pastor of Nexus UCC in Fairfield, OH.

Some of his work for DisciplesWorld includes feature articles and photos on the lives of homeless families and on migrant workers who are rebuilding New Orleans, and news articles on Blue Theology, a new congregation in Kentucky ministering to those recovering from addiction, Cool People Care, and the upcoming Sessions conference for Disciples men. Gregg’s photography is also featured in the documentary “Beyond Borders: Faith and Action in the Arizona Desert.”

We will miss Gregg but look forward to collaborating with him in his new role, which begins Sept. 2. Congratulations Gregg!

S-E-X and the Church

Stacy Spencer is the pastor of New Direction Christian Church in Memphis. He and his wife, Rhonda, are featured in a TIME magazine article this week by David Van Biema: “And God Said, ‘Just Do It’“. The Spencers are part of a small-but-growing number of churches taking on the topic in hopes of encouraging married couples to have more and better sex (and presumably, a stronger, more intimate relationship) based on biblical texts like Genesis and Song of Songs.

The article talks about helping men and women understand the importance of what happens outside the bedroom. From TIME: “For instance, a husband can expect smoother sailing at night if he helps his wife clear her “to do” list that evening, Spencer said in a conference call with his wife, who added, “Otherwise he’s just another thing on that list.”

One of the best quotes in the article comes from someone who questions the new wave of church-sponsored sex programs: “Lauren Sandler, feminist and author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, suspects they are ‘another way of becoming the best Christian wife–to have tons of orgasms so their husbands can go to church the next day and tell people how they really made Jesus proud in the sack.’”

Sorry, that’s just plain funny. Hopefully not true, but funny.

Congo, coltan, and conflict

A group of Indiana Disciples who visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in May talked about their experiences on June 24 at a Global Ministries-sponsored luncheon in Indianapolis. They shared wonderful and moving stories about the hospitality they received from their counterparts in the Community of Disciples of Christ in Congo. They also talked about Congo’s human rights and environmental crisis relating to the mining of coltan.

Coltan (columbite-tantalite) is found in cell phones, laptops, and DVD players. I had never heard of it until a couple of years ago, when I met Rev. Boseala Eale, a church leader from Kinshasa, at the Disciples’ Michigan Regional Assembly. Rev. Eale told me that the mining of coltan in the eastern part of Congo results in death, violence, and injustice. In the end, most of the Congolese people receive nothing from the mining of coltan. The situation sounds very much like the mining of ‘conflict diamonds’ in Sierra Leone and other African countries, yet few people in North America know about this - yet.

Last month, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced the Conflict Coltan and Cassiterite Act, which, according the Brownback’s news release, would call for a certification process for minerals imported from the DRC. Here is a link to the full text of the bill - which was introduced, read twice, and referred to the Finance Committee.

North American Disciples have strong ties to our sister churches in Congo. We are in a position to bring attention to the need for justice and an end to violence surrounding coltan mining there. Let’s see what we can do to support this bill and other efforts to draw attention to Congo’s situations. Its wealth of natural resources could be used to help the Congolese people and can be mined without damaging the environment but without proper attention, that’s not likely to happen.

New Disciples blog

Rev. Linda Hunsaker is the pastor at Ursa Christian Church in Ursa, Ill. Linda has taken her passion for worship design to the web, with her new blog, Creative Disciples Worship.

It’s a great place to share ideas and musings on all styles of worship - traditional, contemporary, emergent, and so on. So go on…check it out.

And keep Linda and her flock in your prayers. They are very close to the mighty Mississippi and the flood waters were rising Sunday as she was preparing for worship. She posts some interesting thoughts about that in her latest blog entry.

 

So where were we…?

OK, I just realized it has been exactly a month since the last blog post. Sorry, ladies and gents, I really have no excuses. But I do have news.

1 - On June 1, I was ordained at Tylersville Road Christian Church in Mason, Ohio, sponsored by the congregation there and also the congregation of Carthage Christian Church in Cincinnati. It was an awesome and humbling experience. I am thankful for those who attended or sent notes of encouragement, who said a prayer for me that day, or who offered encouragement, prayers, and challenges along the way.

2 - DisciplesWorld has a page on Facebook now.  So if you’re on Facebook, become a Friend or Fan of DisciplesWorld!

3 - DisciplesWorld released a DVD last month called Beyond Borders: Faith and Action in the Arizona Desert. It has its own website (and Facebook page). It’s a 25 minute documentary targeted to people of faith, about the work of volunteers on the Mexico/Arizona border who are on the front lines of the immigration situation. Disciples, UCC, Methodists, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Presbyterians are featured. To purchse the DVD, you can download an order form (PDF) from the website or call DisciplesWorld and order it by phone. Or, you can order it through Amazon.com (more convenient, but the magazine doesn’t get all the proceeds that way). The cost is $12.95. Check it out! As the producer/director, my hope is that it will be a conversation-starter for Sunday School classes and church groups. I’m also available for talks, workshops, etc. with the video.

 

Former GMP reflects on “two holidays and a resolution”

Probably the most divisive and difficult resolutions to come before the 2007 General Assembly was the one dealing with the Iraq war. In the scant minutes alloted for debate time, Disciples spoke passionately from the red and green microphones, before and against. Resolution 0728 narrowly passed, and many people walked away disappointed, frustrated, and angry.

Former General Minister William Chris Hobgood revisits the resolution, as well as larger questions of war, peace, and the role of the church, in a post on the CENTERpiece blog, which is maintained by several Disciples advocacy groups.

It’s possible that Disciples’ decision-making bodies could do away with Sense-of-the-Assembly resolutions in the near future (of course, this would ultimately come before the General Assembly for a vote). And it doesn’t include ALL resolutions - we would still have items for reflection and research and other types of business items. But the Sense-of-the-Assembly resolutions are the ones that allow the church to “speak prophetically,” some say. Others think 12 minutes of debate followed by a yes/no vote creates a ‘win/lose’ situation and that we don’t do justice to the issue or to our relationship with each other by approaching difficult issues this way.

Look for the debate to heat up in the coming months as Disciples leaders move this toward a possible 2009 General Assembly resolution.

Conversation on race, anyone?

You may have heard that the United Church of Christ has invited its pastors, members, other Christians, and the nation to participate in a ’sacred conversation on race.’ This was announced about a month ago, in the middle of the whole Jeremiah Wright/Barack Obama thing. Part of the deal is that ministers will be kicking off the conversation this Sunday by preaching on the subject of race.

We’ll be posting an article on DisciplesWorld’s website tomorrow about the UCC and their hopes for this conversation.

Meanwhile, I came across an interesting blog post from Dennis Sanders, an African-American Disciples pastor in Minneapolis. Frankly, Dennis says well what I (and maybe others) are thinking: let’s have a ‘real’ conversation on race.

Maybe Dennis and I are just feeling more than a little post-liberal crankiness these days (hey, he didnt’call his blog “Oscar the Pastor” for no reason), but it seems like all our conversations about race are short, because they seem to be aimed at identifying systems (and people) that are racist. Not that that is bad…but does it really lead to change? What if we had a different kind of conversation, as Dennis suggests? One where people could just speak their minds.

As a white person, I know that I participate in racism. I know that I can’t always see it and I want to help eliminate it. But white guilt is a dead-end street and I gave up living there a long time ago. [Note: there's a great book called The Heart of Racial Justice by Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson which, as a step toward reconciliation, calls for renouncing our false identities, including the "hip white person" identity.]

Now this may seem to contradict some things I’ve said/written in the past, but in my mind it doesn’t. I wish more white people understood more about black liberation theology, but the fact is, most have never heard of it. And most have never participated in anti-racism training. And probably never will. But a real conversation on race, the one we keep on not having in public but having all over the place in private or semi-private, in email and on blogs but NEVER in the church, is the one where whites are allowed to say something like “Jeremiah Wright makes me mad,” without someone looking at them like they’re an unenlightened jack***.  And black people need to be able to say what they need to say too. The conversation might be heated, but it need not devolve into death threats. People do need to be able to be real.

And that’s what I LIKE about Jeremiah Wright, and why I don’t find him offensive. It’s not just that I’ve read James Cone. It’s that at least Wright, for all his brashness, is speaking honestly what he believes (even if many people don’t agree).

My son, who is 18, tells me these conversations we ‘old folks’ (i.e. mostly well-meaning liberal Boomers and X-ers) are having about race are irrelevant to his generation. He agrees that racism exists (as do I, don’t get me wrong) and that it is still a problem. The difference is that his peers talk about race in a different (and possibly more authentic) way. Maybe he’s right.