July 14, 2006
Dear Resurrection Family,
I hope this e-mail finds you doing well. Here's what I'll cover today:
1. Summer Festival a Huge Success
2. Live in Lenexa, Shawnee, Olathe? Join Me This Weekend at Rez West!
3. Resurrection Once Again Voted Most Influential Mainline Church
4. Refreshing Thoughts from a 90 Year-Old Christian Leader
5. Attention KU Alums!
6. Reflections from This Week's Reading
7. Registration for Alaska Cruise Has Officially Begun
1. Summer Festival a Huge Success
More than 2,000 people joined us for our first annual Summer Festival this last Saturday. It was an awesome day! The weather was perfect. The food was awesome. The fellowship, fun, music and entertainment were simply outstanding. This was truly a wonderful community event that we will build on next year. A special thank you to all who made this possible. Great job!!!
2. Live in Lenexa, Shawnee, Olathe? Join Me This Sunday at Rez West!
This Sunday we'll hold our first trial worship service at Prairie Trail Junior High (last week I mistakenly said Pioneer Trail - sorry about that!) at 107 th and Lone Elm, 1/2 mile west of Woodland just off of College Boulevard. Pastor Molly Simpson and I will be live at Prairie Trail leading worship while the sermon will be broadcast from the Leawood Campus where Pastor Russell Brown will preach. If you live in the western part of Johnson County, I hope you will join me at 10:00 am this weekend for our first trial service before the official launch of Resurrection West on August 20.
3. Resurrection Once Again Voted Most Influential Mainline Church
For the last two years the Church Report has surveyed 2,000 pastors across the country seeking to find out who they look to as leading and influential churches in the United States. From this survey they have compiled a list of the 50 most influential churches in the United States. This year Church of the Resurrection was listed as the 11 th most influential church of any type, and the most influential mainline church. To see the complete listing of all 50 churches click on this link: The 50 most influential churches list 2006.
4. Refreshing Thoughts from a 90 Year-Old Christian Leader
Recently I was reading several stories I had missed in the May 2006 issue of Christianity Today. Among them was Philip Yancey's article about his conversation with Vernon Grounds, former president of Denver Theological Seminary. Dr. Grounds is 90 years old, and he reflected with Yancey on his life and faith. I found the comments of this spiritual leader refreshing, honest and inspiring. In it he noted, "So many of these students [those at Denver Theological Seminary today] seem concerned about sensing the presence of God. They expect to live in perpetual sunshine. When a student tells me about an unsatisfying spiritual life, I point them to others, such as Henri Nouwen, who struggled with the same problem; or Lewis Smedes, who never really felt he was God's friend. We shouldn't expect a relationship with God to be on a constant plane all the time. Believe me, over 65 years of marriage, you don't stay on a plane of ecstasy all the time. Romance started for me as a blazing bonfire. . .after a few decades it settled into something more like a heap of glowing coals. . .a different level of companionship opens up." I appreciated Dr. Grounds honest reflection on his many years of experience walking with Christ. If you'd like to read the full article click on this link: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/005/25.88.html
5. Attention KU Alums!
On August 5 and 6 we'll introduce the new United Methodist campus ministers for KU in our worship services. I am excited that Creighton and Nikki Alexander have come to KU from Southern Methodist University where they have had a wonderful ministry. Campus ministry is very important in helping students continue to grow in their faith and remain spiritually grounded while in college. We have more Resurrection students go to KU each year than any other college. Creighton and Nikki are a terrific couple you will truly enjoy meeting. They'll have a table set up in the Narthex where you can meet them on August 5 and 6 if you are a KU student or a parent of a KU student. At 12:30 pm there will be a special luncheon to allow KU alums, parents and students to spend time with Creighton and Nikki, hear their vision for ministry at KU and see how God may be calling you to help. We're looking for a team of KU alums or parents of KU students to help organize the lunch. If you can help, would you please contact my assistant, Sue Thompson, at sue.thompson@cor.org.
6. Reading This Week: Jones and Merton
This week I've started reading two books: Brian Jones' Second Guessing God and Thomas Merton's Life and Holiness. I'm not very far along on either book, though I think I have read Merton's book before (at least I see marks I've left in it from a previous reading - the best thing about getting older and losing your memory is you can read a book a second and third time and enjoy it each time just as if you've never read it before!).
Brian Jones is a pastor and he writes as a pastor, in an accessible way and dealing with the kind of questions we all wrestle with. I have enjoyed the book so far, but I have also dialogued with it a bit. In the early chapters Jones writes about providence - the doctrine of how God works in the world. This is a very important area for theological reflection. I am writing on it in the book I'm working on this summer.
Jones seems to see everything that happens as happening because God is working out a plan. So he tells the story of an older parishioner who is battling pneumonia in the hospital. She tells Jones that she has discovered why God let her contract pneumonia: it was so she could pray with her nurse at the hospital. The implication is that God wills his people to get sick so that he can use their sickness to accomplish his purposes. This, Jones refers to as God "working upstream" to orchestrate all things to accomplish his purposes. I believe God could do that and I would be willing to suffer in order to fulfill God's purposes. There is even a comfort in believing that any affliction I face is somehow brought about by God in order to accomplish his purposes - it brings meaning to the suffering. . .provided the suffering is relatively minor and not out of keeping with God's character.
But having ministered with people who have experienced terrible and evil tragedies and pain in their life - the death of children, the abuse of children, evil perpetrated by others - to speak of these as God's will, and that God was "upstream" planning these things so that his purposes might be accomplished seems both to take away human responsibility for terrible deeds and also to make God out to be unjust, immoral and monstrous. I cannot envision God willing his children to have cancer or to be sexually abused as children.
I would suggest that while God at times is working upstream, his work and will will be consistent with his love and justice. Most of the time God is not orchestrating the events in our lives. Rather than working upstream, God is working downstream - that is, he is comforting us and carrying us through the difficult experiences, and he wills that we look for opportunities to serve him during them, and allow his Spirit to work in us through them. So, while I wonder whether God willed, upstream, that Jones' parishioner have pneumonia in order to be able to pray with a particular nurse (why couldn't God use a healthy co-worker to do the same without making this woman sick?). I do think, since this woman was sick, God willed that she look for opportunities to share her faith with her nurse. I believe the Holy Spirit was prompting her heart to share her faith, and working in the heart of the nurse to draw her to him. So God is not the cause of our suffering, but God uses our suffering, in the words of Paul, "causing all things to work together for good."
The difference is nuanced and may seem small to many, but the difference between a God who works through all circumstances, and who redeems and brings good from evil, and a God who wills evil so good can be accomplished, seems huge to me.
I'll let you know, when I finish the book, what I thought of it. Though disagreeing in places, I have enjoyed reading Jones' book.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who died in 1968. His writings are widely read and he is considered by many to be one of the great writers on the spiritual life from the last century. I'm not quite halfway through the book yet, and it is a quick and easy read, but I will be sharing some of the insights from this book in my first three sermons as I return to the pulpit in August. The book begins with this wonderful sentence, "Every baptized believer is obliged by his baptismal promises to renounce sin and to give himself completely, without compromise, to Christ in order that he may fulfill his vocation, save his soul, enter into the mystery of God, and there find himself "perfectly in the light of Christ.'" He also notes, quoting one of the Church Fathers, that "the whole Christian life is a course of spiritual education conducted by the one Master through his Holy Spirit."
Do you remember in your baptism, you symbolically died to sin and self and were born anew to God? You are his people, his children, his sheep. Your life is a gift from him; was redeemed by him, and is completely contingent upon him. And your entire life, every joy and every hardship, represents an opportunity for Christ to work in you to shape you according to his will.
7. Registration for Alaska Cruise Has Officially Begun
This last weekend we held an informational meeting for the Making Love Last a Lifetime Cruise next July. We've already received deposits from 110 people in the first five days of registration. We have hundreds who've expressed an interest so far. Brochures are available in the Narthex at the Information Station. This will be an awesome experience of fellowship, food, growing in your love for your mate, and growing in your love for God. If you would like more information, click on this web-link: www.deidrestravel.com and click on COR Cruise.
This week a team of our members is in the Ukraine ministering with children and supporting our churches there. Please pause to pray for God to use them, minister through them, and to bring them home safely this coming week.
In Christ's Love,
Adam Hamilton