Weekend

We had an elder's retreat this weekend which was really good on so many levels. We are studying a book - "I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church" and came up with a number of new ideas ot help us to choose life, be bold!, be real community and have fun! One of the issues that came to me was that maybe it would be helpful for us to become an "open an affirming" congregation. We talked a bit about that and decided that we needed to talk to some of the gay people who worship with us as well as see what that would mean for us. What would be the process.
Then yesterday afternoon I talked to Seth who is a gay man who worships with us. He told me that when he tells friends that he worships at our church, their question is: "is it open and affirming?" And he says no - but it is a safe church. What I am learning is that there are various stages of openness and acceptance.

• First, there is tolerance - which can be "love the sinner hate the sin." but we are glad you are here. As a woman minister I have experienced that with male colleagues whose theology says that only men are called to leadership in the church but they are "willing to work with me." I find it patronizing and uncomfortable.
• Another level is we are glad you are here to worship. We accept you. But we are not sure you should be in leadership - so be quiet about your sexual orientation.
• Another level is come, we accept you and you can be in leadership. That is where we are now.
• But the final (?) level is "open and affirming" which says we celebrate who you are. And then we would put a rainbow flag outside the door of the church which would signal that. For us, I think it would be great advertising and a real statement of who we are.

I believe that it would be good - and exciting - to get to that step and I am going to start exploring how we get there.

Another event of the weekend was Sunday worship and I preached on forgiveness. I think I could preach on this every week and never be done. I am constantly amazed at the folks that i meet who are carrying around either guilt or grudges that literally sap their energy. The sermons was about the disciples right after the resurrection locked in a room in fear and suddenly Jesus comes and says - "peace be with you." And then breathes the spirit and then tells the disciples that "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” So my sermon was about the movement from prisoner to priest.

Here is a quote from it:
"This is the Gospel – that Jesus comes into our lives – we who without him are so easily imprisoned by all sorts of things
Are called to be the ones who come and bring God to free others from their prisons of unforgiveness.
Phillips Brooks wrote – We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great you cannot accomplish it unaided”
Being a priest to others – bringing God’s love and grace into messy and difficult situations with sometimes hard to love people is hard."

I could tell this was something that some people needed on Sunday. I always need it.

Last thing, I took today off which has been great. I like not working on Mondays. When I take Thursdays off I am thinking too much about Sunday. Monday gives me time just to rest and

GO TO THE MOVIES - which I did. We saw "21" and I thought it was really good. Chuck did not like it. He said that if he had been alone he would have left and gone into another movie. There was a fair amount of tension about the brainy and vulnerable MIT students who were counting cards in Vegas. The acting was good, it was a good story and I liked the fact that it was true and there was a nice little twist at the end. I give it a Bplus.

It was a good weekend.