Category Archives: RenewalWorks

Monday Matters (September 16, 2024)

September 16, 2024
3-1

Psalm 19

1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

2 One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.

3 Although they have no words or language,
and their voices are not heard,

4 Their sound has gone out into all lands,
and their message to the ends of the world.

5 In the deep has he set a pavilion for the sun;
it comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber;
it rejoices like a champion to run its course.

6 It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens
and runs about to the end of it again;
nothing is hidden from its burning heat.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the innocent.

8 The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.

9 The fear of the Lord is clean and endures for ever;
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold,
sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb.

11 By them also is your servant enlightened,
and in keeping them there is great reward.

12 Who can tell how often he offends?
cleanse me from my secret faults.

13 Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins;
let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound,
and innocent of a great offense.

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Presumptuous sins

As I read this familiar psalm again this week (see above), I got stuck on what the psalmist meant by presumptuous sins. As I started thinking about it, the following questions occurred to me:

By presumptuous sins, does the psalmist mean presuming that God owes me something, that the blessings of life are anything but gift? Is it about presuming that I know better than God how to run the universe? Presuming that I am in a position to judge somebody else? Presuming that other people exist for my convenience? Presuming that I have any clue what is going to happen in days ahead, maybe even in the next fifteen minutes? Presuming that my value is tied to my financial assets, my resume, my social connections? Presuming that the ways I have hurt other people or let them down are not really that big a deal? Presuming that the ways others have hurt me are too grand to merit forgiveness? The list goes on. Presumptuous sins: It’s actually a pretty broad description of ways we go off the rails.

How are we to be preserved from presumptuous sins? It is interesting to me that this confessional portion of the psalm follows two sections with distinct themes. On first reading, they may seem disconnected, as if there are three different psalms smashed together. But I think there’s a thread.

First, in verses 1-6, the psalmist notes that all of creation witnesses to God’s transcendence, the heavens declaring the glory of God, with a message that goes out to all the lands. Consideration of that witness, a glimmer of the majesty of the Holy One, singing “How Great Thou Art”, may well lay the foundation for deliverance from presumptuous sins. Maybe presumptuous sins are countered in God’s question to Job near the end of the book, a passage offered in the daily lectionary last Saturday. God asks Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth.”

Second, moving to another theme in verses 7-11, the psalmist notes that the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. Those laws are to be valued, more desired than gold, sweeter than honey, bringing enlightenment. I believe those laws may be best described not as God telling us: Do this or else. Rather we look to Jesus who in the tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures says that the law is summed up in love, love of God, love of neighbor, love of self. Divine teaching, God’s law, the commandments, God’s statutes are there to keep us on track. It strikes me that they bear the possibility of warding off presumptuous sins.

All of which is to say that we do so with God’s help. That’s why this verse with reference to presumptuous sins is followed by the prayer that concludes the psalm: Let words of mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. It’s a prayer often offered by preachers before they hold forth in the pulpit. And since we’re all preachers (we are all called in baptism to proclaim good news), it’s a good prayer to start each day, to see our words and our thoughts unfolding in the presence of the Holy One whose glory is declared in the heavens and whose law if the way of love.

This psalm invites inventory this Monday morning: what variety of presumptuous sins have a hold on us? And how can we find release from their power over us? We can start by looking up to the heavens which declare the glory of God.

–Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.
Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Monday Matters (January 23, 2023)

January 23, 2023
3-1

The Collect for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

In coming days, Monday Matters will offer reflections on the prayers we say in church on Sunday, the collect of the day. We do this based on the conviction that praying shapes our believing, that what we pray forms us. We do this hoping that the prayers we say on Sunday will carry us through the week.

Vocation

Frederick Buechner on Vocation:

It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a person is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest…The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

I find much to think about in Buechner’s reflection on vocation. I’ve kicked it around for years, and have always found it helpful. I was struck in this week’s reading of it by the notion that there are all different kinds of voices calling to us.

In my own life, I’ve heard those many voices. They are sometimes extremely noisy. There are often multiple co-existent vocations, some of them in competition, some pulling in opposite directions. Parent. Spouse. Child. Priest. Disciple. Cartoonist. Painter. Employee. Employer. Citizen. Social critic.

How is it that we find out which is the voice of God? There’s a fair amount at stake. We live in a world where too many religious people have done too many horrific things because they believe God told them to do it. In my own spiritual journey, I find those experiences present a real challenge to my faith, sometimes almost enough to make this priest a none. As Buechner points out, the voices of society or super-ego or self-interest beckon. They can speak so loudly that they can drown out what is sometimes the still small voice of the Holy One.

Yesterday in church, the theme in the Collect of the Day (see above), and in readings from scripture had to do with call. It made me think of all the stories in the Bible of call. Some of the greatest heroes of the faith when they were called immediately concluded that the call was a wrong number. Moses wasn’t an eloquent speaker. Isaiah was a man of unclean lips. Jeremiah was too young. Peter was a sinful man. Even Mary, perhaps the most faithful and responsive to God’s call, pondered in her heart and asked how this could be.

So we are asked for the grace to pay attention to the call. We push through competing voices. And according to the collect, if we want to capture that call in a nutshell, if we want a job description, it is to proclaim the good news of God’s salvation. That’s very much like the baptismal promise which asks us to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ. That means we are all called to proclaim (or in other words, we’re all preachers). And that proclamation will get communicated in what we say, how we say it, and what we do, and how we do it.

Walker Percy described the modern world as waiting for news. Our big and beautiful and broken world needs that good news. You and I may not always be clear about the nature of our call. It may be hard to hear amidst all the other noise.

But whoever we are and whatever we’re up to, we can embrace this call to share good news. How would you express that good news in what you say, and in what you do this week? May God give us grace to share that news. May we find in the process the intersection of our own deep gladness and the world’s great hunger.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.
Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule.  Sign up now!!
Learn more in our digital brochure.

Is my church too small for RenewalWorks to work?

September 9, 2021

 

We are sometimes asked the question: is my congregation too small to do RenewalWorks?

Experience has shown us that RenewalWorks process is most productive for congregations with average Sunday attendance of 45 and up. However, we know that no congregation is too small to focus on spiritual growth and we have some great resources for smaller congregations to share with you.


My Way of Love is a joint project with RenewalWorks and Presiding Bishop Curry’s office. It begins with each parishioner taking a very short online survey (based on the RenewalWorks spiritual life inventory). Each participant then receives an email with a helpful explanation of our findings, along with some tips for growing spiritually and the opportunity to sign up to receive a personalized 8-week spiritual growth program via email tailored to where they are currently in their spiritual journey.

Churches have gathered small groups and even challenged their whole congregations to take this inventory and then spend some time together reflecting on their personal results. Participants can meet weekly to share their experience of the program: What are they finding new, exciting, troubling? Which suggestions are they implementing to deepen their spiritual lives?

Bishop Curry recently did the My Way of Love himself and loved it! (He discussed it with Scott Gunn, Forward Movement’s executive director.)

Although the email program is personalized for each participant, the group sharing creates a way for the overall church to come together around the idea of spiritual growth.  More information can be found here:  https://www.episcopalchurch.org/way-of-love/my-way-of-love/

The best part is—it’s free, a gift from Forward Movement and the Episcopal Church.

 

The second program we suggest for small groups and small congregations is Revive. This discipleship program is the perfect gift to offer the lay leaders who have poured out so much in service to your congregation. Revive is about transformation through spiritual formation. In just 10 months, this small-group program transforms leaders of practical church ministry into confident spiritual leaders who love God and participate in Christ’s ministry.

Thanks to the videos and extensive facilitator and participant guides, there is little prep work for the facilitator and can be convened online through zoom or in person.  The cost is $50 for a small church.

It is a beautiful program and participants report that it really changes their lives and causes them to grow spiritually in love of God and neighbor.

Information on Revive can be found here: https://revive.forwardmovement.org/

The mission of RenewalWorks is to help congregations of all sizes foster a culture of spiritual growth, and by spiritual growth, we mean growing in love of God and neighbor. Please contact us if this mission resonates with you, we would love to be a resource in this journey.

Discipleship Matters: News from RenewalWorks

July 7, 2021

A new chapter at RenewalWorks

As of July 1, RenewalWorks enters a new chapter, after eight years of ministry helping congregations focus on spiritual growth. We began this work in the hopes that it could be a helpful tool for the Episcopal Church. It was an experiment, a pilot project. As such, it involved a bit of stepping out in faith. Generous donors joined in taking that leap, for which I will always be grateful. Our ultimate goal was to find a home for this work. Good news! After working with about 300 congregations, and learning a lot in the process, our staff will now be supported by the Forward Movement operating budget, an indication that the work is sustainable, that it will continue and grow. The Rev. Canon Scott Gunn has described RenewalWorks as the Research and Development arm of Forward Movement. We’re excited that we can continue in that role.

This will involve some change in our staffing. I’m pleased to announce that Ms. Loren Dixon will take on the role of Director of RenewalWorks. Ms. Samantha Franklin will take on the role of Associate Director.Both Samantha and Loren have been at this work for years, and have proven to be effective and imaginative coordinators and collaborators with congregations. I will continue to be involved as a Senior Consultant, and will do what I can to promote this work. Under the leadership of Loren and Samantha, I know this ministry will grow in new and interesting ways.

We give thanks to God for how this effort has unfolded.
  • Our core ministry is the RenewalWorks process, with online inventory and subsequent workshops, providing helpful discernment for congregations as they seek to move forward. (We believe that this process can be especially helpful right now as we move out of COVID and seek understanding of where people are in their spiritual journeys.)
  • The process which we call Revive continues, with a focus on the heart of the leader, helping clergy and vestry and other lay leaders explore what it means to be spiritual leaders.
  • RenewalWorks-for-me (an individual inventory followed by a series of emails offering a personal spiritual plan) has been adopted by the Presiding Bishop’s office, in a new ministry called My Way of Love.
  • We’ll continue to offer monthly zoom gatherings (called RenewalWorks: Connect) with conversation about what discipleship looks like in the Episcopal Church.
  • And once we fully emerge from COVID, we plan to return to offering conferences to gather Episcopalians focused on discipleship.

As we move into a new and exciting chapter for RenewalWorks, we value your prayers along with any thoughts you might have about how this ministry can grow. We welcome you to spread the news about RenewalWorks to other congregations. As we mentioned, we believe it’s an especially valuable tool coming out of COVID. And Forward Movement will certainly welcome any financial support you can offer in days ahead. This is important work, transforming work for the Episcopal church. It is worthy of your support.

As Dag Hammarskjold wrote: For all that has been, thanks. For all that shall be, yes. Stay tuned for the next chapter of RenewalWorks! By God’s grace, it’s going to be great!

Now What? 5 Spiritual Growth Strategies for the New Normal

April 13, 2021

In the past year, we’ve had to rethink and reconfigure a lot of the ways that we are the church. Probably many of you have navigated the sudden switch from meeting in-person to gathering virtually. With vaccines rolling out, hopefully you’re moving into something like a new normal and returning to your buildings. Although many things have changed about how we do church during this pandemic, some basic principles about vital churches have not.

by Jay Sidebotham

What are these principles? And how can we apply best practices of spiritually vital churches to our congregations as we make our way into this new normal?

Based on our research and learnings from RenewalWorks, we offer some insight that might help you as you forge ahead. (Learn more about RenewalWorks in our digital brochure.)

The first step is to take the pulse of your congregation. How has your congregation changed over the past year? There are many obvious changes. You may stream your Sunday service online or meet via Zoom for small groups. But now is the time to assess how the events of the past year have impacted the spiritual life of your parishioners. For many people, times of crisis lead to deepened faith, but it can be hard to gauge where people are in their faith journeys.

The RenewalWorks process can help you take the pulse on the spiritual health of your parishioners. This information gathered by a Spiritual Life Inventory provides a starting point backed by data for charting your course forward. (And if you’ve done this process in the past, it might be a good time to do it again. You’ll learn a lot.) Contact us if you want more information about this Spiritual Life Inventory and how to get started.

The data we’ve gathered from congregations across the Episcopal Church has helped us understand the most effective practices for fostering spiritual vitality. Here are some things we’ve learned about these best practices that you might want to consider and implement right away:

1. Strengthen the heart of your leadership

Research shows that leaders make disciples by modeling discipleship. How has the pandemic impacted your own heart and the hearts of your congregation’s clergy and lay leaders? You’ve navigated a crisis. It might be time to check in with yourself and other leaders about whether or not you’re making personal spiritual growth a priority. Is it time for a retreat? For connecting with colleagues or a mentor? Is it time to get back to daily spiritual practices neglected during this past year? The leader’s heart is the critical element for spiritually vital congregations.

2. Get people moving

Is spiritual growth an expectation in your congregation? Data we’ve gathered shows the importance of helping people understand that they are on a spiritual journey. In this moment, how can you create a path with clear next steps for wherever they are on that journey?

For Episcopalians, the eucharist is transformative. People have missed it terribly. Now would be a great time to teach about this central sacrament. You may have picked up newcomers to the Episcopal tradition who are unfamiliar with the liturgy. You may be welcoming back longtime church-goers who recognize how much they’ve missed the eucharist and want to know what it’s all about. Capitalize on this curiosity. An instructed eucharist is a great way to deepen understanding of the spiritual journey. Another helpful resource about Holy Eucharist is Furman Buchanan’s book, Gifts of God for the People of God.

At the same time, in the midst of the pandemic, many parishioners have explored new spiritual practices, discovering alternative ways of “being” church. Find out what has been meaningful for people in this unusual time. See how new practices can be incorporated in your common life. As you move forward, how will you mix online and in-person gatherings? Which practices should continue to be offered online regardless of pandemic restriction?

3. Embed scripture in everything you do

According to research, the primary catalyst for spiritual growth is engagement in scripture. Whatever your future plans entail, scripture can be incorporated. It can be as simple as beginning meetings (even those about church business!) with 10 minutes of scripture reflection. It can mean launching a church-wide challenge to read a book of the Bible together to celebrate reunion. (The Good Book Club has archived resources that might help with facilitation). It can be offering study groups, online or in-person or some hybrid, to maximize engagement. Maybe you want to study Bible stories about time in the wilderness, or return from exile, circumstances not unlike coming out of the pandemic.

4. Create a sense of ownership

Nearly 60% of Episcopalians indicate in the Spiritual Life Inventory say that they want to be challenged to grow and take next steps spiritually. A great way to help folks take ownership of their spiritual journeys is to teach and encourage practices such as daily quiet times in prayer and reflection on scripture. Keep offering the Daily Office online even when you can meet in person. We’ve heard from many churches that participation in midweek services has increased since they’ve offered the ability to participate via Facebook or other online platforms. Invite every parishioner to participate in My Way of Love, an individual inventory followed by eight weeks of emails that trace the Presiding Bishop’s Way of Love. It’s an easy way for people to shape a rule of life that can guide them.

5. Pastor your community

There’s been so much hurt over the past year. Spiritually vital congregations find ways to address the longings and losses of the community. How can your church provide comfort? Hold an interfaith liturgy of remembrance for your community. In addition to the pandemic, we are experiencing crises around racial reconciliation. How can your congregation discuss and learn about racial reconciliation? How can you invite the broader community into conversation?

Think about ways to support teachers and students, helping them make up for lost time and letting them know they are loved and appreciated. Economic need is great. Invite folks to support a food pantry or community vaccine clinic with time, talent, and treasure. Share a prayer or blessing when you give out a bag of food or vaccine.

The data on Episcopal churches has shown us that we excel in service but don’t always connect our faith to these acts of giving. Find tangible ways to connect the two. Spiritual growth happens when acts of service are anchored in the Baptismal Covenant, in prayer, and in scripture.

The mission of RenewalWorks is to help churches (and individuals in them) refocus on spiritual growth and identify ways that God is calling them to grow. Now is a great time to engage this process and chart the course forward. We would love to help you on that journey. Contact us if you would like to learn more about RenewalWorks, or if you have other thoughts and ideas about fostering spiritual growth as we emerge from the pandemic.

RenewalWorks – Digital Catalog