What is our mission?

What is our mission? It’s a question we return to from time to time. All organizations do it. It gets set off in a variety of ways. There may be a change in a society or the neighborhood in which we are set. The congregation may be experiencing something new in its internal life. That could be something tangible like a change in attendance at the Eucharist, or a sudden increase or decrease in financial resources, or something less tangible, feelings of anxiety or hope. Occasionally it’s driven by one or two people with some hidden agenda. As the pandemic lessens its grip on us many may seek a sense of grounding and direction.

The task

What most will see rather quickly is that the question is about the stuff that is close at hand. It’s about how we live and work in ourselves and in relationship to some neighborhood or community of people. It’s about how we make use of the gifts and resources we have at this time and in this place. 

The “big questions” are, of course, sitting there in the background. It may be useful to take note of them as we begin. What ground do we stand on?

The ground we stand on

We don’t begin with an empty page. There are a few starting places we may rest in. We do stand on a bit of solid ground.

I’ll offer two lines of thought.

The mission of the church

We all know that the prior question is what is God’s mission? What is God up to? The church’s mission is all about God’s mission. That’s certainly the Prayer Book’s assumption in stating the mission of the church.

The mission of the Church is to restore all people to
unity with God and each other in Christ.

It’s set within the context of the nature of the church and how the church carries out it’s mission. Worth a look. See the catechism page 845 in the Book of Common Prayer.

I’ve always been fond of John Macquarrie take of what God’s up to.

..our belief is that the whole process only makes sense in so far as, in the risk and the struggle of creation, that which is is advancing into fuller potentialities of being and is overcoming the forces that tend toward dissolution; and that continually a richer and more fully diversified unity is built up. ...The end, we have seen reason to believe, would be a commonwealth of free, responsible beings united in love; and this great end is possible only if finite existents are preserved in some kind of individual identity. Here again, we may emphasize that the highest love is not the drive toward union, but rather letting-be. 

“A commonwealth of free, responsible beings united in love” seems a useful counterpoint and complement to the catechism.

The purposes of a parish church

I’d suggest this as a consideration in the parish’s conversation.

Will the actions we take improve the overall health of the parish and enhance our ability to perform the parish’s three purposes? Substantial advances not tinkering! 

1. The worship of God

2. The formation of the People of God

3. Having a sanctifying relationship with the broader community.

How?

How we approach the question is as important as our answers to the question.

We want to do this in a manner that strengthens love and hope. A way that brings us closer to God and one another. The work will usually involve a series of structured conversations. Parish leaders will do well to read something short on group development dynamics. There’s research and experience to guide us.

You can find the five stages of the Tuckman Model online: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. In some manner each stage will happen both in the whole parish and in each small group engaging the work. It’s worth some consideration to engage “forming” with care. How you begin will impact what happens later.

Many of the church’s best training programs make use of a model based in the work of Chris Argyris. He developed “intervention theory”  which starts with the assumption that we want as many people as possible to have a high level of  internal commitment to the mission or work.  He describes it as a process that starts with people engaging valid and useful information. That would include listening to one another; to that messy variety of thoughts and feelings existing among any group of people. It would also include information about trends in the local and national culture and the church’s resources of energy and money. Valid and useful information provides us with a base for the next two steps.

We want decisions made on the basis of free and informed choice not coercion or habit. This base of information and freedom of choice will help build stronger internal commitment within the parish community. You can find a one page PDF on Intervention Theory under “Core Models” on this page – HERE.

You may also find it helpful to look at discernment processes frequently used in making important decisions within the body of Christ.

 No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. (John 3:27)

We are to listen for God’s voice and all that we do. Discernment in Parish Life is a short assessment that may help you understand the community’s readiness for a fruitful look at “What is our mission? As always, we begin with where we are now not where we wish we were.

If your church is about to launch into a conversation about your mission know that the Holy Spirit is in and among you. If you’d like the sisters and brothers of the Order of the Ascension to hold you in prayer, please leave a comment below.

rag+

On the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

Resources

You will find a variety of models, theories, and assessment tools available on the Shaping the Parish Resources page.

There are also a number of related blog postings on “Means of Grace, Hope of Glory.”

           2020-21 postings

           2012 – 2020 postings

An opportunity to love

Parishes are reopening, returning to in-person gathering. There’s a sense of relief. Also, of some anxiety. Mother Erika Takacs, Rector of Atonement, Chicago offered her parish a bit of guidance for this time of transition as a Eucharistic community. I’m sharing part of her message here.

                                          ---------------------------------------------------

This transition is a wonderful sign of renewal and return, and a profound testament to the power of human ingenuity, hard work, and creativity. The efficacy of these new vaccines is allowing us to begin to rebuild and reconnect after these months apart, and I encourage you to get vaccinated if you have not already.

As I said in my announcements on Sunday, this transition provides us with a very real opportunity to practice loving one another as Christ loves us—by truly seeing and listening to one another. Not all of us will receive these changes with the same emotions. For some, this reopening will feel exciting and overdue. For others, it will feel uncomfortable. Some may decide to come back to church now; others may decide to go back to streaming for a while. All of us will have a different response to this transition, and I invite you to do everything you can to respect all of those responses. If you want to hug someone you haven’t seen in a while, and they back away from you, smile and give them an air hug instead. If you want to sit in a pew next to a newcomer, ask them if you can join them before you sit down. Give space to those who need to walk around you, be sensitive to those who are still masked, and try to be as transparent and loving as you can to everyone who is sharing space with you.

When I was little, I used to get nervous going to birthday parties. I’m an introvert, and large crowds of excited children used to make me shy. I worried – would anyone talk to me? Would I feel comfortable enough to have fun? One day my mother gave me some remarkably effective advice: Go to give a good time, not to get a good time, she said. In other words, ask myself: how could my presence help to give someone else joy? This seems to me to be a good question for us in these times of transition—how can our presence provide someone else with comfort or ease? How can we go to give a good time, not just to get a good time?

If you have questions or would like to talk more about this new reopening, I encourage you to reach out to me or to our wardens. Any of us would be very happy to speak with you. And I look forward to seeing you soon.

The Very Rev'd Erika Takacs

Rector

Stop, to pray the office

I love the image of Bernard Mizeki, setting up his mission station, building a school, growing his vegetables, teaching faithfully.  But what I most love is the image conveyed by these words, written of him, “he prayed the Anglican hours each day.”  Something very moving about that.  Every day, several times a day, he would stop, to pray the office.  This is a link to an icon and rite for Bernard.

Bernard Mizeki, Catechist and Martyr in Africa, 18 June 1896. He was trained by the Religious of the Cowley Fathers (SSJE) and served his people in prayer, compassion, and martyrdom.  Here’s his story as told by a brother of SSJE.  Those who trained Bernard could not know what was in store for their friend. Though they had to know that training him in the threefold rule of prayer – Eucharist, Daily Office, Reflection – would ground him in Christ and the paths of grace. And that would serve.

We in the Order of the Ascension are bound by holy tradition and our Rule to pray the Daily Office. And if a parish priest, to do that as an act of daily public worship. Today we will pray the Daily Prayer of the Church with Blessed Bernard.

Over the last couple of months, the Order of the Ascension has had one end her novitiate by taking the Promise in life profession and another begin his novitiate and be clothed. And a third accept a new call. 

Sister Liz Schellingerhoudt, OA, the Rector of St. Clare’s,  Blairsville, GA, took the Promise a second time, and became life professed, on May 3 as our annual retreat began.  Brother Poulson Reed, OA, is the Bishop of Oklahoma, took the Promise for the first time, and became a novice, yesterday, June 17. The Order gives thanks for the Holy Spirit’s work of bringing them to share in our life and work. We are also thankful for the new call of Brother Gawain to serve Holy Trinity Church, in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan.

You’ll find more about Liz, Poulson and Gawain on the Members page.

In the years to come how will they serve in prayer, compassion, and suffering? What is it to be a Religious and a parish priest or a diocesan bishop in our times? Please join us in prayer for Sister Liz, Brother Poulson and Brother Gawain.

Almighty and everlasting God, who kindled the flame of your love in the heart of your holy martyr Bernard Mizeki: Grant to us, your humble servants, a like faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in his triumph may profit by his example; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

rag+

 All postings

There’s no abiding city

Remember to keep your death before your eyes daily. – Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 4

I suffer from sarcopenia. Don’t be alarmed. If you’re old enough, you suffer from it, too. Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass, a natural part of the aging process. As I turn 64 and am at the YMCA lifting weights, I look at the young folk around me and think “just you wait and see.” I can’t lift what I used to lift. I used to be able to bench press my own weight five times. Now (on a good day) I can get the weight off the bar and down to my chest. As it turns out, that’s the easy part. Then I have to look around and beg somebody to pull the weight up and off me. Otherwise, I’m ruined. May as well pay rent there.

Truth is, I’m already dead, at least that’s what Benedict reminds me to remember. No amount of a YMCA exercise regimen, macrobiotic diet, or even prayer can change my already deadness. It’s just a matter of time. Meanwhile my sarcopenia continues unabated and I am reminded daily that I’m in a race I can never win. The race is rigged against me. Sarcopenia, among other truths, will have the last laugh. Vassar Miller’s sonnet, The Wisdom of Insecurity says it so well:

There’s no abiding city, no, not one.
The towers of stone and steel are fairy stories.
God will not play our games nor join our fun,
Does not give tit for tat, parade His glories.
And chance is chance, not providence dressed neat,
Credentials hidden in its wooden leg.
When the earth opens underneath our feet,
It is a waste of brain and breath to beg.
No angel intervenes but shouts that matter
Has been forever mostly full of holes.
So Simon Peter always walked on water,
Not merely when the lake waves licked his soles.
And when at last he saw he would not drown,
The shining knowledge turned him upside-down.

Living with my death always before me. To some, that may sound depressing. I get that. Hey, I’d like to be able to do what I once did with my body. To me, however, it isn’t depressing at all. It’s liberating. I don’t have to pretend the inevitable won’t happen. I don’t have to lie to myself or to others. I can admit that life is rigged and not in my favor. But I also can proclaim that “Simon Peter always walked on water.” I can also know that I won’t “drown” in my sarcopenia, in my torn peroneal tendon (another story all together), or in my inability to remember things. I can trust with all that’s in me that one day Jesus will turn me “upside-down” just like he did with Simon Peter.

In the meantime, I hope we realize our sarcopenia isn’t limited to our physical muscle mass. We all suffer from a spiritual sarcopenia as well, especially on the other side of this Pandemic; the loss of our “muscle mass” of compassion and mercy for one another. And that’s something that need not be lost with aging. Grace toward one another is always possible, even for dead people like me.

+Scott

Brother Scott Benhase, OA

Vicar, St. Cyprian's, Oxford, NC

 All postings 

Conversion of Life

Brother Robert Gallagher, OA

May 2, 2021. Order of the Ascension Retreat

You can only be saved by Jesus Christ.

If you want to understand conversion of life, the goal of it, the means of it, you start there. You begin with remembering Jesus Christ. You continue with the knowledge, the stance, that you can only be saved by Jesus Christ.

Identity

You are not saved by being white, or Black, or Asian. You’re not saved by being cis or trans, by being straight or gay. You are not saved by the NRA or the Brady Campaign. You are saved by Jesus Christ.

Three people. Friends, maybe 4 or 5 circles out.

A 60-year-old Black woman. When she’s on Zoom, she has a Black Lives Matter poster on the wall behind her. She’s the chair of the African American Advisory Council of the police department. She’s played a role in improving police practices. She’s helped recruit and support an increased number of Black officers. And her sense of truth and justice have had her in a struggle with the defund-the-police city council.

An amateur crossdresser porn model. On how she deals with people who get aggressive or nasty with her -- “Some people are kinda quirky and come off in a weird way, but if I know that’s how they are, I just roll with it.  I’m never aggressive with anybody … only defensive if attacked.  And never ever mean. … I’m an open book and strive to always be honest and forthcoming here, because it’s just who I am.”

A Marine Corps and civilian firearms instructor. He works to reduce the number of firearms deaths by suicide. He had learned that 60% of deaths by firearms were suicides. 37% murder (mostly around drugs, gangs, and domestic abuse) and 3% other causes.[1] His commitment to protect others has him working alongside gun safety supporters to reduce the number of suicides.

Each person is a mix of given and chosen identities. Each must cope with various groups of people angry about their identity and the related behaviors. For example, the Black woman must deal with the hate of white racists as well as the extreme distain of more “progressive” whites and Blacks.

Each person, someplace along the line, decided that their primary identity was a stance that transcended some other true part of who they are. They took a stance of love that showed itself in striving for truth and justice, kindness and compassion, and protecting human life.

I remember as a child hearing my father comment on the new enthusiasm of his siblings about being Irish-American. A world of songs, dances, jokes, and legend. Dad said, “It’s enough for me to be an American.” It wasn’t so much a dismissal of their new interest as it was about how he defined himself by something more central. Something he had fought for, seen others die for, and that he wanted in a quiet way, to live for.

Children of God

All of us make decisions about our identity. We give ourselves to a uniqueness, a web of characteristics that defines us. For us in the Order we have a particular central identity. One that infuses and drives all the other elements of who we are. You might think of this too as a set of concentric circles.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. (1 John 3:1a)

³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3-4)

For us, you and me, the primary identity is that we are children of God (you are free to phrase it differently). It’s the central circle. Given by grace and sacramentally secured in baptism. It is our life and witness in a world that has a weak grip on Reality.

Identity seems to be one of the driving anxieties of our time. A kind of obsession. The more uncertainly we feel about being simply a child of God, the more desperate and insistent we seem to get about all sorts of lesser identities. And that obsession takes us into a place and onto pathway. At the moment, many people seem to seek places and paths of resentment and impatience. We want vindication.

Vindication

Often bound up with the issue of identity is our desire for vindication. A desire for vindication that overrides our desire for community, reconciliation, and love. We are desperate to be right. Even we, who like to think we know what’s going on, and believe that at the center is our being a child of God, even we seek being right and long for vindication.

Michelle and I walk two times a week. Every so often we’ll have a three-minute argument over who is right about some fact or how we recall an event some months earlier.  We get very certain and insistent.

We all seek vindication. In big ways and small ways.

Priests and laity forced from parishes want to hear that what was done to them wasn’t right.   Black Americans want to hear that their anger is justified. White Americans want to hear that they are good people. It seems like everyone wants total acceptance and no one is willing to offer that to everyone else.

We are a nation tired, worn out by all the blame and accusation.  The blame and accusation heaped upon us. Even the blame and accusation we heap upon others

And what is our vindication?

The psalmist wrote,

But at my vindication I shall see your face; * when I awake, I shall be satisfied, behold in your likeness (Ps 17:16)

The psalmist pleads innocence, wants God to look for justice, and claims he has been faithful to the law. He has been assaulted by the wicked and pressed hard. He wants the Lord to bring them down, to deliver him. We cry out “Give us justice as we understand it. Let us know that what we have suffered was wrong and that those responsible will be judged. Bless our views, our way of seeing things.” And God responds, “I love you. See my face.” God is so disappointing sometimes!

Conversion of life

And finally, what we are offered isn’t justice or justification.  What we receive is the face of God. And we are offered the path of conversion of life.

I must be ready to pick myself up, and start all over again in a pattern of growth which will not end until the day of my final dying. And all the time the journey is based on that Gospel paradox of losing life and finding it. ..my goal is Christ. Esther deWaal

Our contemplation begins with fact and truth. We each have many identities that fail to save us. We each carry our brittleness, fear, and resentments as useless baggage.

My primary identity is that I am a child of God, beloved by God, and by the grace of God a member of the Body of Christ which offers me a pathway. A life of sacramental grace, daily common prayer, and routine contemplation. There is a second range of identity that is all wrapped around the first. All about guiding me on that pathway of grace. I am a priest, parish development practitioner, a Professed Member of the Order of the Ascension, and a friend of Michelle Heyne.  And outside that are the lesser identities. All acceptable. Unless they try to move to the center.

Conversion of life is both a place and a pathway. We decide to stand in a particular place. We decide to set out on a specific pathway. We accept the center, and we decide what goes around that to live and express it, to support and guard it.

we know that we abide in him and he in us … God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (I John: 4:13 and 16b)

We are in a world, and a church, desperate for change. That’s always a dangerous time. Individuals and society are inclined to go off the rails at such moments. Our understanding of the change, the conversion, that is needed is often driven our lesser identities, our grievances, and our desire for vindication. Yet it remains that our conversion, and our pathway, have one end—we are saved by Jesus Christ—and one route–we lose life to find life.

---

[1] In 2017, six-in-ten gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (23,854), while 37% were murders (14,542), according to the CDC. The remainder were unintentional (486), involved law enforcement (553) or had undetermined circumstances (338). Public perception generally underestimates the number of suicides giving more attention to mas shootings. Depending on which definition used the number killed in mass shootings is relatively small, in 85 or 373 in 2018. Pew Research Center - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

The Promise: 2021 Three reflections on the Benedictine Promise offered at the 2021 retreat of the Order of the Ascension. Includes an introduction by Sister Michelle Heyne, OA the Presiding Sister.

 All postings