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Dear Friends,

I sat down again with two of our youth leaders today: Fr. Michael and Erik, and with Fr. Clint. What a team! Clint had brought some ideas to me that really deserved some careful thought and prayer. I need a powwow with the whole team to put my finger on the pulse of where we were going.

Youth and Student Ministry has evolved over the years into a very intense discipline within the church’s life. It is not glorified day camp. It is not even just a cool hangout time with a nice, safe, set of peers. Youth ministry has an incredibly incisive role in the spiritual development of the modern teenager. Her are a couple of things that are guiding our outreach to your students.

1. First, it isn’t a “youth group” anymore; it is a “Student Ministry”. It is a ministry that comes along the student at the most important and formative years of her life. She is shaped by what she learns in school, on the court, and in daily interaction with other teens. Our church’s Student Ministry reaches these kids who are growing up fast is a whole different world that many of us know. These young adolescents need God in the way that every generation needs God. However, I think we all understand that the challenges are much more severe in these days.
2. Our student ministry needs to take into account that nearly every subject you can think of is up for grabs in our secular world. In truth, the Student come of age in a world where everything is ‘flat’. There is no hierarchy of principles or values, according to the secular mind. The Christian truth is equal to the Hindu truth. Thus, how can we decide about certain behaviors and values and activities, all of which are part of a young person’s worldview. Dallas Willard has a phrase called “Spiritual Knowledge”. By that he means the truth and the value of what Jesus brings into a person’s life. Jesus has something to say about sex, materialism, greed, racism, politics, and lying. Our Student Ministry challenges these young people by teaching them to think biblically…and critically…about the world we live in.
3. All of this requires more than passing thoughts about bible, life, faith, theology, culture, and modernity. When the “RENEW for our Future” campaign was introduced it was for several reasons; chief among them was a resurgence of energy and strength in our Family Ministry, Children, and Youth (Student) Programs. Fr. Clint leads this effort…and the results are becoming apparent across the spectrum of our ages. But particularly in the Student Ministry, I am thankful to have two sound and passionate men who oversee the program; Amanda Payne (as administrator) reaches our teenage girls with passion and heart as well. But we are forming up a team and investing in these kids…for the long haul.

(You will get a chance to hear Fr. Michael preach on Senior Sunday, the 3rd of June, at 11 AM. He has a love of Christ and His Word that will be evident to all. Also, he has told me of how impressed he is with our graduating seniors. I know many of them too, and I agree this Michael, they represent a very positive sign of God’s blessing on our church and the future of the ministry of Christ.

In Christ,

Fr. David+

I'm late, I"m late, for a very important date!

From time to time I just run out of time…every time.  Sigh.  Here are a few things I had hoped to get up on this blog this week.

1.  I spent some time with Fr. Clint Kerley this week reviewing the work in our Family Ministry.  What a great joy to see things turning to life!  Great stories.  New children.  Great staff.  For example, this weekend our Gap45 kids will be heading to Pinecove for an overnight.  We have about 40 of these 4-5 graders going…and plenty of sponsors.  I hope to drive out sometime on Saturday with Bishop Bill Godfrey (our friend/bishop  from Peru) to have some time with the kids.

2.  Fr. Clint told me that our Student Ministries Summer Camp program is filling up…  Think of it: Estes Park.  June.  Coolness.  Mountains.  Beauty. Rockies.  I plan to spend a few days there as well.  I attended (for a few days) the camp a few years ago on the beach.  Our kids are awesome.  If you haven’t signed your teen up…please do so right away.  There are some limited scholarships available.  Don’t be bashful…we want your student there!  June 10 and following; check the website for more information.

3.  I had the distinct honor of presiding at the memorial service for Ms. Cathi Woodmansee.  Fran and I are close with the Woodmansee family and over her years of struggle with cancer, hundreds of people came into their orbit of love and inspiration.  It was a service of love and celebration of her life…and the life of Jesus her Savior.  Thanks to all who came to support the family and be a part of the sadness and joy.

I felt the power of the Holy Spirit present…  Many did.

4.  This Sunday is the fourth in a series of parables called “The Seven Wonders of the World”.  Our idea is to use the parables of Jesus as transparent portals into the reality of God’s Kingdom.  These parables are ‘postcards’, in a way, from the Kingdom of God.  Through each of these parables, we can see things about God’s character and God’s Kingdom.
This week I will be preaching on the greatest parable of them all…or at least Jesus’ most famous one: The Parable of the Prodigal Son.  (Luke 15)

I hope you see you this weekend.  Weekly worship is a joy and, given the state of the world, a necessity and privilege.

Don’t be late!  :)

DHR

I have truly enjoyed my part in the Leadership Seminar for the GAFCON meeting.  Bishop Felix Orji and I are leading a group of about 50 men and women from all over the globe.  We have presented some solid ideas and information about leadership.  We have had good/engaging discussions.

I was sorting through some images in preparation for my Keynote-style address, and I came across the one below.  I was amazed at this.   The vast continent of Africa literally could swallow the US, China, India, and a handful of other countries.  This was the first step in try to understand some of the cultural challenges that we have in the Anglican Communion.  Africa is HUGE. It is not one culture.  It is not one tribe.  It is not one nation.  Click on the image below.

There are huge cultural differences between us all.  But they all recede into the background when we talk about the Gospel of Christ and how to more effectively proclaim it to a needy world.  In one row of chairs I see men and women from Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, Rwanda, and Chili.  Day by day I am growing closer to these brothers and sisters in Christ.

Here are some of the slides from yesterday and today.  (I am really putting them up for the class…)

Friday evening, as part of our Holy Week series of events, remembrances, and worship, we will gather at 7:00 for a deep journey into the Cross and Death of Christ.

Fr. Clint, our Associate Pastor for Family Ministry, wrote a wonderful article I’d like to share with you about the Requiem.

“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” Rest eternal, give them Lord.

These are the introductory words of a traditional requiem, a Eucharist service for the burial of the dead. As early as the first century, Christians prayed that those who had died would rest in peace. Over time this was formalized and expanded into the burial service known as a Requiem. The prayers of the requiem service contemplate the hope found in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and the confidence that those who have died in Christ will know the fullness of his salvation. Although originally a spoken service, by the tenth century the words of the service had been set to musical chants. As western music developed to include vocal harmonies and musical accompaniment, these were naturally added to this service to honor the dead. In the 17th century, the influence of opera caused the musical renditions of the traditional requiem prayers to be expanded and lengthened. Thus, the Requiem became a concert piece as well as a composition for Christian worship.

Gabriel Fauré composed his version of the Requiem over a period of three years, 1887 – 1890. However, it was a work he continued to refine and expand throughout the rest of his life. Originally, Fauré’s Requiem only included five movements. In it’s final form, it has seven movements. Early critics claimed that his Requiem was too happy to befit the occasion of a funeral. Fauré responded, “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a ‘lullaby of death.’ But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.” In these words, Fauré mirrors the sentiment of the Apostle Paul, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (I Thessalonians 5:9-10)

I have been focused on finding Grace.   If you remember, the way I have explained it to you in written and preaching moments is this: I want to explore the contours of Grace.

This began for me as a deeper awareness from my study of Ephesians.  I remember that I came back from Sabbatical and I began to teach the men at On Point from the first 10 verses of Chapter 2.  I could not get off the subject for week.  I wasn’t stuck…I was ‘camping out’ on those tremendously powerful passages week after week.  It was like I was relearning the Gospel all again.

I read that Jesus himself taught his disciples about his presence in the Old Testament law, prophets, and the psalms.  (Luke 24)  I added knowledge to the idea that the scripture were inspired by God…and that the main subject of the bible is God.  I began to realize that though God’s presence in the pages of the Old Testament was clear… I had never really discovered the clear presence of Jesus Christ.  He had to be there!  If the Holy Spirit has inspired the text…and the book was about God…the Jesus had to be there in character, in form, in foreshadowing, in example, in reference, and in contrast.  Like a shadow cast on a wall…there has to be something making the shadow.

And so I began to look and learn.  I began to read and study.  And I was rewarded every week with a sense of Christ’s presence or the truth of Christ in many Old Testament passages.  St. Augustine said it this way, 16 Centuries ago:  The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed; the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.  Think about it…

Thus, last Sunday, when I preached on the terrible choice that the Israelites made to doubt God, to demand that their spies assess the Promise Land, and to let their fear overwhelm them, I mentioned that there was one man who had a different spirit.  Caleb was the scout who had gone into the Promised Land and come back to the people.  He told the truth: that God’s plan for them was to have the land.  Caleb came back and told them they should plan to cross over.  It was safe.  It was lush.  It was amazing.  Let’s go!

Caleb is the one who goes before to give people the faith that they will crossover.  Of course, you begin to see a small sketch of the ministry of Jesus.  Jesus is our Caleb.  He is the one who has goes before us and confirms all of God’s promises to us.  Remember John 14:  “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”  Isn’t there a hint of Caleb’s role here?

This is but only one example of the hundreds of clues we find about Christ hidden in the Old Testament, a hope promised in the Old Testament, that is realized in the life of Jesus in the New Testament.

Google the phrase “Christ in the Old Testament” and see for yourself.  Fair warning.  You can spend days researching this.

DHR

Recently, Christ Church played ‘host’ to about 400 church planters and leaders from around North America.  For three days last week the whole campus was alive with the future during the 2012 Anglican 1000 Church Planting Summit.  Those who came are men and women who represent our future:  planters, coaches, clergy, rectors, bishops, team members, and our provincial leadership.  They are the ones shaping and planting our future as Anglican Christians here in North America. This year’s conference focused on building an Anglican Church from the ground up.  It was very practical in some ways – but also had incredibly inspiring moments.

These are the top five things that I took away from our time together.  If I took some more time for reflection, I could easily add to this list but these were my heart-felt take-aways.  (Please share your own take-aways in the comments!)

Here is what I thought:

1.   The worship in the sanctuary was ‘transportational’, as all liturgical worship should be.  In fact, that is my operating definition of liturgical worship: worship that is planned out in consultation with the Holy Spirit and the historic experience of the church designed to move a congregation individually and corporately to a new place at many different levels.

2.  Tuesday evening involved a quiet, meditative Lenten Evening Prayer.  The room’s mood was set by the mournful tones of the cello and viola.  We sang two songs about the cross which set the heart right to receive the preacher’s message from The Rev. Ray David Glenn, of Canada.

3.  The next important moment for me was the Wednesday evening Eucharist.  If I say nothing else about the Anglican 1000 Summit, I will give thanks to God for the music and worship life — especially that evening.   The room has seldom sounded as alive with singing and joyous prayer before God.  It was so much more than volume.  The energy in the room was palpable.  Up in front and during the praise songs I could feel the brace of voices against my face.  It was a moment I will never forget.

4.  While I do not count myself in their number, I submit that the speakers this year were tremendous.  They have been excellent every year… but this year was different.  This year everyone who spoke about the challenge of planting churches was from our tribe of Anglicanism.  (Even Scot McNight, our “honorary Anglican”, really should be an Anglican.  I have read his books and follow his blog; he writes and reads and speaks our language.  Go to his site, you will see the same thing.)  With every speaker coming from our heritage, most of us could simply dream and become inspired.  We could immediately see the impact of the speaker’s comments to our Anglican context.  Mike Breen sounds like every Anglican should and David Taylor simply ‘gets it’.  Check out both their blogs here (Mike) and here (David).

5.  The WEDCAP model seemed to catch on.  I know it is not as ‘sexy’ as a baseball diamond; it is not nearly as ‘hip’ as something you’d see at an Andy Stanley Conference.  But for all of its clunkiness, the WEDCAP seemed to catch on.  (I remember showing it to the church plant guru, Ed Stetzer, a few years ago.  He chuckled and pronounced the double-edged benediction of doom: “Bless your heart!”  We moved on.)

However, every leader I spoke to at the Summit instantly got it and began tweaking it to fit their own context.  One planter, an engineer by background before going into the ministry, went home and fashioned a full-scale, 3-D, origami model of the WEDCAP triangle.   He had turned it into a pyramid.

The six categories (WEDCAP) seemed to help everyone.  The top of the triangle (Worship, External Focus, and Discipleship) was well represented by our speakers.  But as many of you can attest, the bottom part of the triangle, which would not normally draw a workshop crowd, was well attended and the workshops for the Communications, Administration, and Pastoral Care were very much appreciated.

Finally, I would want to say something self-serving about the host church.  The staff and volunteers at Christ Church have a well-earned reputation of providing excellent ‘host-site service’ for our guests.  This is a great joy to me.  And this year was no exception at all.  This year the staff and Christ Church volunteers were over the top!  The comments I heard from my colleagues were a bit embarrassing in how effusive they were about our campus, our greeters, helpers, hosts, and workers.

Daniel Adkinson and I felt the great appreciation from the attendees as we concluded our third and last Summit together.  Each event has been better than the one before it, and this was a great place to step aside and let others lead the movement from the ACNA office.  But as we go, we leave with great joy in our heart.  We have seen amazing things in this short period of time.  We have been greatly blessed.  And we will pray for the success of Anglican 1000 in our personal prayers and do whatever we can to uphold and assist the ministry in the years ahead. 

David+