A special edition of Monday Matters

I’ve been writing these emails for a few years now, a way of checking in each week to explore ways to put faith to work in the world. It’s been good for me. (Preachers really preach to themselves.) The opportunity to connect with you each week has helped me grow. I am honored when anyone reads this Monday message, and grateful when people comment in response.

I’ve tried to keep the focus on faith, what I call the so-what factor. What difference does our faith make during the week? I’ve tried to avoid political rants, advertisements for programs, solicitations of support in these emails. You get enough of those.

But every so often, folks ask what I do when I’m not writing these messages. They also ask what RenewalWorks is all about and how this work is supported. So I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about the work we do, and invite you to help us if you’d like.

I serve as Director of RenewalWorks, a ministry of Forward Movement . We began this work four years. It was a bit of a leap of faith, hoping to help congregations make spiritual growth a priority. The RenewalWorks process includes an online inventory taken by parishioners, which asks about their own spiritual journey, their beliefs and practices. Then a small team in that congregation answers questions, with the help of the data generated by the inventory. They ask: Where are we as a congregation? Where is God calling us to go? Our RenewalWorks staff helps those congregations chart a course forward. We try to help them build cultures of discipleship in their churches. Monday Matters is just one way we do that. You can find out more about this work on our website (www.renewalworks.org).

I love this work, and we’re making headway. In fact, we’re expanding in a number of ways, running conferences like the one described below. We’re launching a new resource called RenewalWorks For Me, an individualized approach to RenewalWorks. (It’s kind of like a spiritual fitbit, creating a spiritual fitness plan for a person to apply.) We’ve got a new ministry called Revive which focuses on spiritual leadership, helping clergy and lay leaders like Vestry members develop a prayer life, engage with scripture, and explore a sense of call.

After four years at this work, I’m convinced there is lots more for us to do, as we seek to support spiritual growth in our churches. And there are ways you can help. Please spread the word about RenewalWorks wherever you worship. Pray for us in our work. (Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. That’s in the psalms somewhere.) And consider offering financial support to RenewalWorks.

Our ministry has been sustained so far by donors, many of whom I know through this Monday email. I am so thankful for that help. There are also folks who made five year commitments to get this work launched. Again, my gratitude is deep. We’re nearing that five year mark, and so we are looking to fund the next three years. If you’d be willing to help us, you can make a one-time donation at https://renewalworks.org/donate/. You can sign up for monthly contributions. Or you can talk with us about being part of a group that will commit to keep us going for three more years. Feel free to contact me at jsidebotham@renewalworks.org to learn more about our hopes and our needs.

If Monday Matters matters, consider supporting this work, in whatever way you can. As we sometimes say in the Anglican world: All may. None must. Some should. We take on this work, often challenging work, for the sake of our beloved church, and in support of our dedicated clergy, as together we seek to grow in love of God and neighbor, which is what we mean by spiritual growth.

Thank you for your prayerful consideration of this email. Talk to you all next Monday.

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:
Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org

If you’d like to join in this donor-based ministry, donate here.

I was glad when the movers finally carried our piano into our living room, but somehow we couldn’t locate the box with sheet music. So I decided I’d go shopping, finding something simple I could play. At the time, I was new in town as I went looking for a music store. I saw a likely spot in a strip mall. I noted as I approached that the place looked kind of dark.

As I walked in, I could immediately tell that I wasn’t going to find Bach Inventions or Chopin Nocturnes. This was really heavy metal. Really heavy. A few unfriendly faces behind the counter gave me the once over. They checked out my clerical collar, and deduced that I was probably not their target audience. The total effect of the place was to make me feel that I didn’t belong. I took a quick tour of the merchandise, feigned interest and made a hasty exit. I ordered music online.

But I have thought about my experience in that store. I wondered if people ever feel like that in church. I wonder if people ever summon the courage to walk through red doors, dare to believe ubiquitous signs: “The Episcopal Church welcomes you”, find themselves in a pew and feel they don’t belong. Maybe they can’t figure out which book to use. Maybe they need a coach in liturgical aerobics. Maybe they feel under-dressed. Maybe they make their way to coffee hour, where a friendly gaggle of congregants talk to each other in friendly huddles as newcomers orbit the periphery, looking at dated bulletin boards, feigning interest in printed materials, checking out clouds in the coffee, the way I faked my way through the music store.

As you may know, I vent by cartoon. One of the cartoons that gets a lot of Episco-response depicts a young couple awaiting an 8am eucharist. They are seated by the aisle, though the church seems pretty empty. A well-dressed elderly woman approaches, perhaps a pillar of the parish. She taps the young man on the shoulder and says: “You look like you’re new. Welcome to our church. Oh by the way, you’re in my pew.”

This cartoon appeared on some Facebook page. A person commented that it was dumb, that the artist was feeding an unfair caricature of the Episcopal Church. The comment: “That would never really happen.” Almost immediately, from all over the country, people responded that they had had exactly that experience. I wondered if that imaginary (or perhaps real) couple felt like I felt in that dark music store.

We sometimes sing in our church this hymn: “All are welcome in this place.” It’s a wonderful biblical aspiration, with roots in ancient Israel instructed to welcome the stranger, all the way to the gospels, where Jesus says: ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”(Matthew 10:40), all the way to the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans where he says: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

Fact is, we are all strangers (some stranger than others). We all probably share Woody Allen’s angst, noted in his refusal to attend football games because he was convinced that in the huddle they were talking about him. We all probably have moments, individually and collectively, when we fail to welcome as Christ has welcomed us.

Spiritually vital congregations are able to get people moving in the spiritual journey. That begins with welcome. What are the welcoming opportunities available to you? When this week will you have the chance to practice hospitality, in church or outside of church? What would it mean for us to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us?

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:
Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org

If you’d like to join in this donor-based ministry, donate here.

Just because

Recent travels gave me the privilege of dropping in on a lively Bible study (not an oxymoron). Turns out I needed to be there. The topic du jour was forgiveness, based on the gospel read yesterday in church. The topic of forgiveness has been coming up a lot on Sundays. It’s also been brought to my attention in other settings recently, which reinforces my own need to do spiritual work in this area. I’m not that good at forgiveness.

I’ve been wondering why forgiveness gets so much biblical and liturgical airtime. Not only did Jesus talk a lot about it. He practiced it at the crucial moment of his life. On the cross he prayed: Father, forgive them.

In our worship, forgiveness seems to be the threshold we must cross to grow in relationship with God. When we gather for eucharist, we precede Holy Communion with the confession, recognizing we have been forgiven. Before we receive bread and wine, we claim forgiveness as we have forgiven others. The Lord’s Prayer, repeated in every liturgy in our tradition, holds forgiveness at the center.

As the discussion about forgiveness unfolded at the Bible study, one person mentioned Anne Lamott’s well-circulated insight about resentment. She compares withholding of forgiveness to drinking rat poison and hoping the rat dies. I have a photo by my office door, a reminder in my comings and goings. It’s a picture of the small jail cell where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years. Soon after his release, he spoke of how he had forgiven his captors. Someone asked how he could possibly do that. He said if he failed to forgive, they would still have him in captivity.

That principle was echoed by Desmond Tutu who affirmed that there was no future without forgiveness. The study group noted recent examples in Amish communities or in Charleston where unspeakable injury was met with forgiveness. Amazing grace.

Our discussion ranged to include the challenges around forgiveness, the myth that you can forgive and forget, the annoying (or worse) difficulty of forgiving someone who is clueless or careless about the injury that person has inflicted, the depths of injury human beings inflict on each other, often most painfully in families. And sometimes in churches.

In my work, as we explore movement in the spiritual journey, a key topic we consider is forgiveness, beginning with the good news that we have been forgiven. We observe that an inability to practice forgiveness can be a stumbling block, an obstacle thwarting spiritual growth. I have a feeling that Jesus knew that, when he said (as we heard yesterday) that we are called to forgive, not just once, not just seven times, but seventy times seven. He calls for limitless forgiveness. Which of course, makes no sense.

Which brings me to the comment made by one of the participants in the study. This wise person (also wise guy) said that, in the end, he was committed to being a forgiving person just because Jesus said to do it. He compared it to his own family when he was growing up. At certain points, his parents instructed him to do something he wasn’t inclined to do. In lively adolescent rebellion, he asked why. They said: Just because.

From his point of view, Jesus’ call to forgiveness had little to do with whether we wanted to forgive, whether we felt like it, whether it was just or fair, whether it even felt possible. It was a matter of listening to our teacher who said that forgiveness is good for us. It was a matter of obedience. As followers of Jesus, we sometimes are led to practice forgiveness just because Jesus taught us to do it, trusting that Jesus knows stuff we don’t, trusting that Jesus knows who we are, trusting that Jesus knows what it means to build loving, liberated lives.

Just because.

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:
Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org

If you’d like to join in this donor-based ministry, donate here.

Faith at work: Thoughts on Labor Day

Along with Thanksgiving and Independence Day, Labor Day is one of three national holidays that has made its way into the church calendar. Why so few? Why these three? What’s the spiritual dimension to Labor Day, as prayers and scriptures selected for the day pose questions about the work we do?

A reading from Ecclesiasticus celebrates the variety of kinds of work that people do, smiths and potters and such. What kind of work would that passage talk about today? How can today’s work be so celebrated, so honored?

A reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians focuses on what it means to build a life. It asks about the work we do, paid or unpaid, about the kind of foundation on which we build. What would it mean to build on Jesus Christ, as St. Paul recommends?

In the gospel, an excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges the disciples to think about where they are giving their hearts. Jesus says: Where your treasure is there will your heart be also. In our work, do we give our hearts to that which will not satisfy our hearts?

(We’ve listed those readings below. Take a few minutes on this national holiday to reflect on those passages.)

I’m particularly taken with the prayer crafted for Labor Day, mindful that our praying shapes our believing. This Monday morning, pray it with me. It’s found below. Parse that prayer a bit, beginning by noting that our lives are linked one with another. Recently, I’ve been reminded by three ways that we are all connected.

For starters, I’m mindful of the ways that life came to a halt on a Monday afternoon as the sun sped across the continent, eclipsed by the moon. In a time when our nation seems more divided than ever, for a brief darkening moment, there was unity forged in the presence of a force greater than ourselves. The cosmic scope of the event evoked a sense of wonder. We were united by beauty and maybe a bit of holy fear. For once, something was genuinely awesome.

And in a nation in which one in three people knows someone personally affected by Hurricane Harvey, we’ve seen a different way in which our lives are linked with others. That unprecedented weather event has called people from all walks of life to pitch in to help. Schools and sports arenas, bowling alleys and mattress stores, mosques and megachurches opened doors to strangers, a recognition that in the face of powers greater than ourselves, we are bound to each other.

Then last Monday, ministers from around the country gathered in DC to remember Dr. King’s march on Washington. Their trek, their tribute reminded me of Dr. King’s letter, written from a Birmingham jail, addressed to mainline clergy who he thought were, how shall we say, under-performing in pursuit of justice. He wrote:

“We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”

So what is the so-what factor? Given that we are all in this together, the work we do is intended to be done, not for ourselves alone, but for the common good, done not only mindful of what we get out of it, but what we can offer to the wider community. We’re in this together. That’s something to celebrate on Labor Day. Something to work on this fall.

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:
Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org

If you’d like to join in this donor-based ministry, donate here.