Global Positioning System Faith

On our recent Mission Team trip to Iowa, Dennis Higgins entered our destination address into his new GPS (Global Positioning System). After that, a rather kind voice guided us highway by highway, road by road and street by street to the Disciple’s mission station waiting for us. If we took a path different than the one suggested, we would hear the voice tell us they were reconfiguring a new route based on where we actually were.

Recently I have thought a lot about how we navigate and negotiate the path we take as individuals. A wheel-chair mobile person negotiates a way through life differently than another. Someone who is blind, or has cancer, or cannot speak English, or who is young, or one who is married, or who is older, or… Well, you get the picture. We each make our way through life with our particular set of abilities, insights and circumstances.

As pastor, I am given to thought to how we make our way in the world as the church, specifically as First Christian Church. And, I know you think about it also. We make our way as protestants, as a “mainline” congregation, as Disciples of Christ, as a small congregation, as…

It is a joy to be your pastor, to be a minister and missionary with you, as we make our way into the world. We remember the one who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” May we navigate the Way with joy, hope, and love.

What gifts, abilities, insights, challenges and circumstances influence the way you navigate in daily life - the way you navigate as a child of God on a path of faith?

Mission Team

Do you have family or friends displaced and unsettled by recent hurricanes and flooding?

Television cameras have moved on, but there is much cleanup and rebuilding still to be done. I'm not referring to the floods in Illinois and Indiana, nor Hurricane Ike, nor Hurricane Gustave, nor an Alabama tornado, nor a typhoon in Myanmar, nor an earthquake in China, nor floods in Iowa, nor Hurricane Rita, nor Hurricane Katrina, but the Tsunami of December 2004. And there are likely areas preceding these that still beg attanetion.

Our congregation cannot send mission teams to each area, but we can send one to Iowa. Why go there when there are so many areas closer to home that have since been hits with floods? Simply, because we said we would. Margaret Gambill, Nancy Gambill, Dennis Higgins and I will be heading the Cedar Rapids, IA on Sunday, September 21.

And, as a congregation, we are reaching hurting persons in areas overwhelmed with loss of life, health, homes, businesses, pets, and more. Each gift we give to Week of Compassion, is joined to other gifts from our sisters and brothers in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). But these acts of generosity also connect us to partners across denominational and cultural lines to act decisively with compassion as a sign of hope. Thank you!

What suggestions do you have for our next mission trip?

How Many Times?

This Sunday the sermon topic will be forgiveness. Not a unique topic for a gathering of disciples, of followers of Jesus Christ. However, it is one of those topics that catches the attention of nearly everyone.

Most everyone who gathers for worship will have, at some point in their life, experienced the need for forgiveness or be in need of extending forgiveness. We know forgiveness leads to healing, sometimes it may be the only way. The disciple asked Jesus, "How often should I forgive? Seven times? Jesus responded, "Seventy times seven." Don't do the math. That isn't the point. Miroslav Volf wrote, "No line can be drawn between those who should be forgiven and because they sin only rarely and those who shouldn't because they sin repeatedly. There are no unforgiveable people...The scandalousness of God's indiscriminate forgiveness hits us even harder when we are called to imitate it."

It is too easy to simply say you should forgive those who have sinned against you. To live into it together will require a community of persons seeking God's holy face in the world.