Hearing the Music

I Need Jesus

Why is it that we have such a hard time loving people that we disagree with? These people could be close friends or family, they could be leaders in the company we work for or of the country we live in. However these people come into our lives we often experience them as our enemy, rather than as someone with whom we share a bond. What do I mean by that? What kind of bond do we share with "these people"? This answer is not original to me, but when we experience another as our enemy, part of the problem, perhaps the core of the problem, is that we believe that they need Jesus more than we do. We forget the basic tenet of the Gospel that all are equal at the foot of the cross. This is the bond that we share with all humanity: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. When we properly account for this fact, only to find ourselves gloriously rescued, the result can never be a prideful looking down on another, but rather, as Paul puts it in our text for Sunday, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3). This sober judgment is the heart of Gospel living and will change our churches and our world! Singer songwriter Nathan Partain puts it this way: 

"Now I say, “Glory! Hallelujah!”, I’m so glad to be redeemed!
To be so desperate for Jesus and so gloriously weak,
I do not ever want to stray from the Community of Need,
O may I never leave dependence or forsake my Food and Drink,
I need Jesus. Oh, I need Jesus. I need Jesus. Oh, I need Jesus."

And so, we belong to the Community of the Redeemed. It is amazing how much God has entrusted to this community and the extent of the gifts that he has given to his Church. We will be looking at these more closely on Sunday (Romans 12:3-8). We will also be experiencing the receipt of one of these gifts as we install Addison as an associate pastor. I know for some this is kind of confusing. Addison is already one of our pastors. Why are we installing him? The answer is that in our ecclesial policy, as we have called him as an associate pastor, his relationship to the church has changed. As an assistant pastor he was basically an employee of the Session and not a member of the Session. Now he is called by the congregation and is a full member of the Session. We mark this with an installation and invite you to be a part of it (at our 6 pm service) and certainly invite you to continue to pray for Addison and Lynnette as they continue their life among us with this new relationship to Christ Church.

Don’t forget to sign up for one of our services this week. Please continue to be in prayer for the many dynamics involved with our moving inside. As you can imagine, folks at Christ Church fall along a spectrum of comfortability with being inside, wearing masks, etc…. Once again we come back to that central truth, we all need Jesus as we navigate the fraught nature of these days.

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Hard Candy

I remember as a kid getting my church candy, right before the sermon would start. One of my favorites, that we only had occasionally because the wrappers were too loud, was the Anise candy. I loved the Anise candy because I could suck on it slowly and it continued to give good flavor right through the sermon! In many ways this is a picture of what we get as we continue to hold the hard candy of the Word in our hearts and minds soaking in its flavor. As we return to Romans (this week chapter 12:1-2), this call to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, testing and approving the will of God, his good, acceptable and pleasing will, requires that we extract the juices of God’s Word, savoring every bit.

To help us savor God’s Word our sermon study team* is going to be providing 5 days of additional hard candy to be enjoyed following each sermon in our By Mercy series on Romans 12-16. Each devotional will take a small part of the larger text for further reflection and prayer. In many ways these devotional offerings will expand on (and replace) the questions for further thought/discussion that we have been providing recently and will be attached to the Friday letter. If you would like to have the devotional emailed to you daily, Monday- Friday, signup here. In addition to personal growth or reflection, these short reflections could be used in families for growth/reflection, in C-Groups as a basis for discussion/prayer, or you could use them with a co-worker or neighbor for Bible study. However they are used, we want to take the Word, allow it to dwell richly within us, so that by testing we can discern the will of God.

As we continue our life together don’t forget our plans to move inside. This Sunday evening we would love to invite a socially distanced, full-house to experiment with the service we have planned. If you are able to make it, we anticipate the service will be of great value in working out some bugs for the following week. Next week all the offerings will be in place, including: Home Worship Guide, Indoor Worship (please RSVP), and we will continue to transmit to car radios in the parking lot. I want to highlight the parking lot, lest it get overlooked. For those concerned about going in the building but desiring to get out of the house and see some others, pull your car up, tune in to 90.1FM and worship along with the community inside. We will all close with some singing outside, around the island.

It has been a challenging season as we figure out our life together in the midst of present realities. May we all continue to rest in the mercies of God and may we find our hearts and minds renewed!

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Transitions

As we continue to make our way through the fall season, I want to note a couple of transitions with you. First, this Sunday will be the last for Pastor Bryant & Jennifer with us! He will be opening God’s Word to Philippians 1:3-11. There is a light refreshment time scheduled for following the 10:30 service. I know that you will want to share your well wishes with them and commemorate this transition together.

Second, as the weather transitions and our beloved outdoor services become more unstable, indoor services will resume in the evening (6:00pm) on Sept. 27 and then in the morning of October 4 with a full slate of four services that day (8:30AM, 10:00AM, 11:30AM and 6:00PM). These services--all the same--will be by registration. While we are excited to return indoors, it has been good to have been reminded that church is more than a building and worship happens in many different forms. We have also been reminded that loving our neighbor means to seek their physical safety as well as to pursue their psychological, relational, and emotional well being. Worship and continuing to come together are important parts of loving one another.

So how do we do this? Currently the best practices to maintain a healthy environment are to wear masks indoors and maintain social distancing. Borrowing from regulations being used in higher education we have determined that the square footage of our sanctuary allows for around 120 worshippers with appropriate distancing. In order to continue to be welcoming for visitors we will be reserving seats for visitors and for CC folks who forgot to register or had a change of plans. People will be strategically seated to maintain distancing, and ushers will be available to assist with seating needs. You are encouraged to bring your own PPE – there will also be face masks available at the door. We are designating our 8:30AM service as especially appropriate for immunocompromised and/or vulnerable individuals and ask that everyone who attends that service to be particularly conscientious about mask wearing. As noted above, these "best practices" are currently being followed by other congregations and higher education institutions gathering large groups.

While we are confident in our ability to worship safely, we understand that not everyone has the same needs. To accommodate as many as possible, we will continue to prepare and post the Home Worship Guide on the website. In addition, we are also planning to transmit a worship service that is being conducted inside the building to the parking lot via FM 90.1 for those who wish to remain in their cars. The Session encourages everyone to follow their conscience, respect the consciences of others, and take responsibility for your own health needs. As we move forward, we will continually assess how best to call the congregation to worship and provide the means for us all to respond to that call.

Transitions are not always easy. I am grateful for the numbers of people that have contributed to thinking this particular transition through. You can find a whole list of Q&A here. I encourage you to check it out.

_{Photo by Oliver Hihn on Unsplash}