16 March 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

At Glen Mar, we say every member is a minister and so I just wanted to write a note to all my brothers and sisters at Glen Mar about the upcoming Holy Week. I appreciate all the ways you help your brothers and sisters in Christ to praise God, week in and week out.

I especially wanted to thank you for all the ways we pull together on this holiest of weeks for the holiest of tasks. What do I mean “holy tasks”?

Dressing the altar, providing for the children, the powerful music, the sound and lights, the bread and juice, the hand of welcome, the hospitality, the loving guidance, the Christian care, the Word read and proclaimed, the preparation, all of it, they are holy tasks, set apart for God and our neighbors, whom we love, so that in that experience, even in that big ol’ room, people can experience the love of God and the freedom and power that comes from following a resurrected saviour. Even if you don’t have an “up front” job and even for folks who “only” are there to worship, your holy task is to be a little of Christ’s love for the person next to us: the person washing their hands at the restroom sink, the person we hold the door for….There is no more joyful task, there is no better news, there is nothing more exciting than that!

I was thinking about what I’d want to say to you and to all the folks at Glen Mar about Easter, and I thought about how it is every year, with the people streaming in, all the faces and hands stretched out for bulletins, all the chairs, all the ties and dresses, and how it’s either 90 degrees or 40 degrees outside. We studied the Feeding of the 5000 in my leadership class a couple weeks ago, and the metaphor we used was, that Jesus, “embraced the crowd.” He turned to them before he “knew” them, without regard for their “goodness” or anything about them, and offered them compassion and hospitality. We need to open our arms wide and “embrace the crowd” that comes on Easter, offer them hospitality, and share what we have with them in love. If there’s ever a Sunday to smile at someone, or to talk to the person next to you in the row, this is the one! Ask them what service they go to! We’re all in there together, so you won’t look funny! If they say this is my first time, invite them to worship next Sunday!

I know that your constituencies and you have many things to do on Easter, but I’m hoping that we can all let the joy in our hearts show on that Sunday, everybody in the congregation, from Bishop Schol to that set of grandparents in the last row by the door. We are one church, all the time. On Easter, we show on the outside, how God made us on the inside: one body in Christ, one family in God, beloved, redeemed, and free.

This week as we rehearse, unload equipment, hunt for missing napkins, figure out what’s causing that bizarre problem that we’ll only find out about on Sunday, as the kids enjoy spring break and as people commit their time and their gifts to this Holy Week, I hope we can remember that Jesus has already done the hardest part. When I get out of my car on Easter morning, I’m literally shaking with excitement. Because I know the tomb is empty, and because like Mary Magdalene “I have seen the Lord.” I have seen him at Glen Mar, in the cribbery and the Bible study, at the communion table and Celebrate recovery, at youth group, and in the fellowship hall, at the budget meeting, the staff meeting, and on the mission trip and at Carpenter’s Kitchen. I bet you have seen him too! Thank God and thank you for that gift we give each other, and praise God that God has brought us all together to proclaim, all together, with one voice and one heart, Christ is Risen!

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15 February 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

My 6-year-old son is a budding theologian.  Just between us, he’s going to be my secret weapon when I take Systematic Theology. Last year around this time when his kindergarten class studied Martin Luther King, Jr. he marched out of school talking about him a mile a minute, so I say,”He was a good man who stood for justice and peace.”   And my son looks at me with his serious face on and says, “Mommy, justice is a ‘God-word,’ just like love.”  I so hate it when he’s smarter than I am.

As we prepare for Valentine’s Day, I can’t help but think about love.  I know Valentine’s Day is supposed to be based on a saint and everything, but it strikes me in practice as a “Hallmark holiday” somebody stuck a robe on and started calling “Reverend.” When I see all that red cellophane and all those stuffed bears clogging up the CVS aisle, it actually makes me a little sad.  Will a little sucrose heart-shaped vitamin with “Be Mine” stamped on it really be the cure for what ails us in the love department?  Can a Whitman’s sampler really get us through a long dark night of the soul? (“Yes, yes it can!” I hear the chocoholics shout).

Maybe our task as pastors and preachers is to point folks away from the temporary sugar high of the Valentine’s Day culture to a God who wants to say to every yearning heart, “Be Mine.”  Maybe we can use this Hallmark holiday to acknowledge the valentines from God that have been tucked into the corners of our lives: all those good gifts of God that go  unnoticed over time. God’s valentines often come in human packages, in our families and friends, in our pastors and teachers, in our congregations and even in our enemies. Maybe we can explore more deeply the kind of love with which God so loved the world and what that kind of love means for us  and our life together.  This deep love sits with those who suffer and reaches out to people who are lost, lonely, and in despair and refuses to abandon them even when they prove difficult to love.

By all means, we should express our love and appreciation to people in our lives this Valentine’s Day.  We don’t do that nearly enough.  But we also need to remember that love is washing feet and sitting with and praying through.  Love is not cute or heart-shaped.  Love is a God made flesh that was killed on a cross and was raised from the dead.  It is a lenten journey and an Easter proclamation.  It is serious life-claiming, life-changing, business.  Love is, first and foremost, a “God-word.”

And that’s why we exist as a church, to love the world like that. A real valentine, a real hope, a real dose of God’s death-defying life-giving love.

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8 February 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

The service was Wednesday night and I thought it was awesome in every way.  I loved having Pastor Ruth up there imposing ashes with Andy.  She’s a gift and a treasure.

When I consider the commitment we’ve made to pray and work together leading up to the opening of the new building, I’m so excited about what will come of it.

I wanted to share an email I got from Bonnie Smith this morning.
They Should Have Used Tape

The Ash Wednesday Service certainly did put me in the right frame of mind for the season of Lent.  A story comes to mind at this season that I would like to share.

When my first grandchild, Callie, was about 3 ½ years old I was talking to her, asking her what she learned in Sunday School that day.  She looked up at me (of course she had the sweetest expression on her face) and said:  “Nana, did you know that they put stickers on Jesus’ head and pushed it down real hard so that it would stay on?  It made him bleed!  They should have used TAPE.”  At first I commiserated with her and gave her the biggest hug!  Out of the mouths of babes!  I have never forgotten her statement, “They should have used tape.”  She was too young to understand the whole meaning of the Easter story but saw the way He was hurting and thought her idea of using “tape” would at least stop the bleeding.  I might add that Callie was a tape fanatic! Ha! Ha!

When I think of this story I realize that I/We can “stop the bleeding” by being a faithful servant of our Lord Jesus Christ:  by feeding the hungry, clothing the needy, sharing our faith with someone that is hopeless and in despair, praying for the sick and for those who mourn.  We can use our talents to glorify God in our homes, place of worship, schools, workplace and the community.  Sometimes this seems like a tall order.  But, just think if each of us did our part, there might be more peace and love to go around for everyone!  He shed his blood for us, this is the least we can do for Him!

Blessings,
Bonnie

I like the portrait of a church designed to “stop the bleeding” by sharing the love of Christ and making a difference in the world!  As we journey on in Lent, I am so excited to hear what folks discover in the course of their time of prayer.  Post comments and reflections in the 100 Days of Prayer category if you want to!

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30 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

“Let us pray.” It is a simple statement and one that we often hear in worship. It is a powerful invitation to encounter the living God, the One who made us and who has called us to be at Glen Mar at this particular point in its history. It is an acknowledgment that wherever two or more gather in the name of Jesus, there he is in the midst of them. It’s an encounter with a God who has brought us, as people and as a congregation, to this place and time so that God can use us to make a difference in the lives of people: some we already know, some we haven’t met yet, and some whose names we may never know.

People of Glen Mar Church, we believe your presence here at this time is no accident. As we get ready to make a difference in our world from a new site in the name of Jesus Christ, we invite you to enter into a time of being open, listening and connecting with God. People of Glen Mar Church, “Let us pray.” Starting on February 6 (Ash Wednesday), let us pray together for one hundred days, as an act of hope, preparation and commitment.

To receive daily meditation suggestions via email, sign up at http://100days.glenmarchurch.org/mailman/listinfo/dailyprayer

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30 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

The LCI conference closed with an address from Dr. Peter Storey, past President of the South African Council of Churches and former Methodist Bishop in South Africa where he was part of the church’s struggle against apartheid. I thought his talk was the best and most awful thing I’d heard in a long time. I had to wait to blog on it until I had recovered.

Have you ever just been going through your life and suddenly the Gospel hits you in the face? It was like hearing a Pauline letter. I cried right there in front of the church staff and everything. Crying in public is something I try to avoid.

He talked about the struggle in South Africa, the Church on trial on trumped up charges by the government. He described church leaders from around the world descending on a dingy country courthouse to stand with the local church representatives, an example of what the Church can do when it takes its mission seriously and stands united.

But he also talked about white South Africa during apartheid in a way that drew some disturbing and accurate parallels with America today. Instead of seeing all humanity as one community, we are quick to divide along economic, racial and social lines. We are blind to those problems we do not want to see. We live in a big bubble of privilege that comes from being a part of a rich First World powerful country. If the church is to do its job, we need to begin to see the people we don’t want to see, to come to know them and realize that they are Christ for us.

He talked about many prosperous communities being like the man born blind, whom Jesus touched twice, once and the man could see shapes, twice and he could see clearly. Perhaps the American church needs to be “touched by Jesus a second time,” he said.

It made me ashamed for the ways in which I have become complacent–my own unwillingness to see and act in the name of the Gospel. When I called Eric afterwards, I said, “I feel wretched.” He said, “Honey, that’s great! What a gift!” (Yeesh). But what he meant was, the Gospel of Jesus is supposed to knock a person off her horse from time to time in order to bear some good fruit for God.

And in the end, I think God is working at Glen Mar to make sure we are about the ministry of Christ in the world, doing Church, not playing Church. Speaking truth to power, not talking to ourselves.

I think that’s why God has given us the new facility, to do and be the Church in new and kingdom of God sorts of ways. I pray that I might be faithful to those vows made at my baptism and that my own work in ministry would bear some fruit for God.

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23 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

Today’s keynote was Rev. Gary Mason, a Methodist pastor, who is doing some amazing work in Ireland at the North Belfast Mission. John and Brian heard a workshop he gave and I hope they will blog here about it. He said the Church, called to be salt, often keeps that salt in a fortress, a church building, when we are called to pour salt in the street, in the community. His organization has 5 staff that work in it, and 55 staff that work in the community, promoting reconciliation and building the Kingdom of God. His work in improving the lives of folks in poverty and his restorative justice work is amazing.  I’m humbled.

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22 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

Workshops at the LCI conference begin! My first one was on Emergent Worship. The name sort of makes me think of those horror movies where you wait for the scary alien baby to emerge from the cocoon, pod, unsuspecting human head. It’s worship that is experiential, with a view toward experiencing the living God, which is what people long for when they come to worship. It’s intriguing stuff. It reminds me of the iconoclastic movement.

People who tend to really love emergent worship can be any age. It incorporates ancient symbols, crosses, candles, and all the senses. In our postmodern age, this is a pathway to God many find meaningful. The best way to talk about it is to send you somewhere. Check out www.emergentvillage.com or google emergent worship.

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22 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

First off, today started with a great song called “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down.” We’ve got to do that for Easter or the Great 50 Days!

The keynote speaker was Rev. Gil Rendle, who knows a lot about churches and how they work. What a smart guy. He talked about organizational management in churches, and Lord help me, I liked it. Administration is, shall we say, not one of my gifts, so it’s amazing to me that looking at the data can lead to something that helps. But it does.

Highlights include his statement that churches/organizations tend to know more about who they were and where they were than where they are going. True. And all churches have to deal with an increasingly “small margin of life” (the problem of less time left over in our crazy society). He said Large Churches have found ways to address this that work. He used the analogy of pew-renters (highly committed weekly attenders) v. time share people (can only come to church 2x a month in worship, but treasure that time). Large churches work with these realities in a way that still attempts to form disciples of Jesus.

Another cool thing was the distinction between management (Are we doing things right?) and leadership (Are we doing the right things?). Thinking about our church’s structure at Glen Mar, I wonder how all that shakes out. We need both Moses and Aaron, separated but working closely together, to make the mission work.

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21 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

Tonight we all arrived in Orlando, which gave me the additional thrill of having some of our staff meet my wonderful parents who had driven me from Stuart. Mom treated the whole thing like she was leaving me at college, saying she’d help me get “settled in” in the room before they left. Dad was low-key, despite threats to assure everyone who would listen that “he had all the attributes of a dog, save that of loyalty.”

The Welcome Address was by Dr. Trudy Kibbe Reed, President of Bethune-Cookman University. I was struck by her notion that we are all “authenticated” by someone. Who is “authenticating” our people? Gangs, materialism, media? Clearly the church should be authenticating in the name of Jesus…isn’t that part of what our baptism is about? Learning who we are in Christ and then, as a servant of the Servant, learning how we are supposed to live?

I’m excited about what tomorrow may bring.

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21 January 2008 by Mandy Sayers.

As I write this, I’m visiting my folks down in Stuart, Florida. The breeze is making palm trees wave and I’m trying to send some of this warmth northward. This afternoon, I’ll be going to Orlando to participate in a Large Church Initiative Conference called “Making a World of Difference” with other members of the Glen Mar staff. It seems appropriate that the conference starts on Martin Luther King Day.

Dr. King was a Christian, and a pastor, and a prophet, just the sort of person to be a keynote speaker at some eclectic gathering of Christians from around the country at a conference such as this. Dr. King’s life was a witness and a clarion call to the power of love, nonviolent resistance, and the power of a dream.

His “I Have a Dream” speech gets quoted a lot, and it should….but if all he had was a dream, we would not be remembering him today. He had a dream that spurred his lungs, feet and soul into action on behalf of poor people everywhere, of all races. He had a vision of justice for the oppressed that could not be consigned to sleep, some ethereal vision that disappears under the heat of “real life.” He energized a people that the world said had no reason to dream in the first place. And they took up their beds of hopelessness and despair, and they walked. They walked because they wouldn’t ride in the back of a bus anymore. They walked across bridges and in heat and rain. People came from all over to walk with them. They took a stand that was going to get them in some trouble, no matter who they were or where they came from. They did it anyway, and they did it without violence, overcoming hate with love.

I am not old enough to remember Martin Luther King, but his voice still calls to me, as a Christian in particular. It calls me to account for all the ways I crave “the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.” (Strength to Love, 1963). It calls to me as a baptized soldier for Christ, charged with being part of God’s mighty project of love, liberation and peace in the world.

This LCI conference is in the city of the Mouse, the Disneyplex of anesthetizing happiness, where hundreds of dollars can buy you and the kids a coke and a bad hamburger, and a few rounds on a roller coaster where a tape plays “It’s a Small World After All.” Songs talk a lot about Disney being a place where every dream you dare to dream can come true. But this week, at a Methodist Church up the road from Universal Studios, a motley crew of unlikely dreamers will come together in the name of Jesus, the Word made flesh, who called folks to do more than listen to him, to do more than dream about him. He called them to take up their cross and follow him, into places where they might get into trouble, spreading healing and freedom and choices and hope.

Martin Luther King Day is a fine day for Christians to gather–may we heed the call to align our dreams with God’s liberating will, and then, let’s get to walking. After all this is a day about action in furtherance of God’s dreams.

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