When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to
     you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ,
     and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My
     speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a
     demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom
     but on the power of God.
     --1 Corinthians 2:1-5 NRSV

As a minister, my inbox is filled with emails promising tools guaranteed to grow my church. It’s a hazard of the profession. I tend to view such offers with skepticism, because if all these strategies and tools worked then why are there so many dying churches these days? Sure, in every community there’s usually one large church that everyone points to as proof churches can grow and usually the finger pointing at the large church turns to point with judgment at one’s own smaller church. The problem with such judgment is that nobody mentions that the larger churches often succeed not by making new converts but by sucking up members from smaller churches like a spiritual vacuum. Often the larger churches (especially the megachurches) are cults of personality that have found ways to put on a better show instead of authentic communities of faith.

Don’t get me wrong, things like an attractive building, effective preaching, quality music and offerings for kids and youth all matter, but they matter less than many realize. There’s no excuse for churches offering low quality ministry, but a lot of congregations out there purporting to be thriving churches are superficial, consumer-oriented fluff. It’s pretty packaging on an empty box.

As PHCC makes decisions about its future, it will save itself a lot of time, aggravation and money accepting that most churches are never going to be as large as they were a generation or two ago. That’s not the world we live in anymore. As I’ve written previously, I’m not convinced the larger numbers present in the post-war church boom in the 1950’s and early 1960’s really amounted to more disciples of Jesus Christ. Sure, church pews and bank accounts were full, but that’s not the same as people devoted to following Jesus. If it were so, then why is it that when our society’s approval and rewarding of church involvement waned churches began declining? Many who came to church did so, because it was good for business and their standing in their communities. When such “earthly” rewards went away, so did their need to go to church.

I believe smaller churches can thrive if they are willing to offer something that is authentic, loving and vulnerable. These qualities are what made Christianity grow exponentially in a Roman Empire that was hostile to it. People came, because in the Christian faith community they were valued in ways society did not value them. People who had no place to belong found belonging. People who found no awe and wonder in the gods of culture discovered the awe and wonder of the one true God. People were loved because of the image of God inside them made them valuable instead of feeling they were valued only because they were important, wealthy or influential. That’s why Christianity flourished. Where these qualities are found, Christianity will always thrive.

United Church of Christ minister Jennifer Brownell makes this point in an eloquent way:

What if church growth, though, was less about a plan or a program and more about an orientation, an attitude, a way of being? What if the most attractive feature of your church to young families (and old singles and all the configurations of humanity in between) was that you had the kind of true peace that confronted conflict in a healthy, unafraid way? What if the most appealing growth plan was a commitment to faith so unabashedly reverent that it looked something like awe? What if the best church growth program of all was a community of people giving and receiving the kind of comfort that can only be inspired by the Holy Spirit? I mean, I don't know if it would work. But if your church is anything like mine, you've tried everything else.
​
PHCC leaders have begun important conversations about how the church should move forward and what the future of the church will look like. These are the kind of preliminary conversations that are essential and must take place before a pastoral search really gets going. Conversations that ask the right questions before a pastoral search gets up and running. Questions such as: 

1. Is our goal as a church to be as big as we were twenty years ago or fifty years ago? 
2. Or is our goal to be as faithful as we can be in the here and now with whoever will do so with us?

The difference between those two questions is all the difference in the world.

The first question leads to searching for a pastor, setting priorities in spending and attempting ministries that exhaust a small congregation and leave everyone feeling like they have failed. The second question leads to a congregation which looks for a spiritual guide rather than a charismatic guru and ministries that flow out of what church people gladly offer rather than guiltily and half-heartedly hand over. The first question leads to a competition between our church and other churches. The second question leads to us sharing what we have with anyone and everyone who is working to build the Kingdom of God. The first question leads to making our church look good so we look good, but the second question leads to God getting the credit God deserves.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be a part of a faith community that helps me know God’s peace, love and grace rather than a church that contributes to my insecurities which say who I am is dependent on how much I own, who I know and whether or not I can write a big check. There’s a reason why yoga classes are everywhere, online courses offering help with mindfulness fill our social media feeds, and self-help books are best sellers. People are just as hungry for peace and purpose as they ever were. The need is real, but it will not be met at a church whose biggest goal is to have more numbers—more people in the pew and more money in the bank.

I’d rather go to a small church that is real than a big church that’s fake. How about you?

Grace and Peace,
Chase

​     Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
     --Proverbs 3:5 NIV
 
Not too long ago, we upgraded the internet at my house. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and all four of us were at home all the time using the internet, our bandwidth couldn’t handle the demands of four people streaming videos, video games, podcasts, social media and checking email. As it turned out, we were using “old technology” and the wireless router providing Wi-Fi was several years old and therefore ancient by current standards. Also, our provider had new plans which gave us faster speeds for a cheaper price. It turns out they are happy to just keep on billing you at a higher rate for slower speeds until you bother to check into it yourself. Since the upgrade, nobody is complaining about slow download speeds at my house, but I’m sure this pause in outrage will be only temporary. Our society is addicted to getting what we want as fast as possible.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to watch most any movie I want at the push of a few buttons and I get frustrated whenever the dreaded buffering symbol shows up. Whether it’s an hourglass, an arrow moving in a circle, a spiral or whatever, I grit my teeth at all of them. But I do take a perverse joy (just as my parents did before me and their parents did before them going back to the beginning of time) telling my teenagers about the days of going to an actual store to rent videos on videocassette, having a phone with an extremely long cord so I could talk on the phone in another room away from my parents and how amazing it was to connect to America Online via a modem which sounded like a truck carrying telephones crashed into another truck carrying staticky old black and white TV sets. Things keep getting exponentially faster but we are never satisfied for long.
 
I find myself at this particular moment in time especially impatient. When will the pandemic be over so things can go back to normal/ When will the election come so that the bombardment of political ads will end? When will our society do what needs to be done to eliminate racism, injustice towards immigrants, climate change, poverty and so many other social ills? When will things change for the better? I feel nothing but impatient right now.
 
Our spiritual lives seem like an odd mixture of patience and impatience. On the one hand there are times when putting something off any longer can hurt ourselves or others. We put off changing our diets or exercise that  our bodies and minds need to be healthy. We delay vacations and times of rest and become less productive due to fatigue. We make excuses not to change policies and even laws that are unjust as people with less power suffer. On the other hand, there is much that is not in our control and we cannot change. We waste energy on anger and fear instead of finding peace and joy in the present moment. We love efficiency so much that we lose touch with the joy found in creating something of quality with care and intention.
 
Patience is one of the so-called Christian virtues, but it is not valued much today. In my own mind, I confuse patience with passivity. My nature is always to press forward intending to use the human agency given to me by God to its fullest. Of course, my way of plowing ahead regardless of the consequences is often due to the anxiety that comes when I slow down enough to acknowledge it.
 
The spiritual writer Henri Nouwen draws a distinction between patience and passivity. He writes:
 
Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else.
 
The scientist and writer on stress reduction Jon Kabat-Zinn describes patience this way:
 
Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or some thing for it. This doesn’t mean you can’t hurry when you have to. It is possible even to hurry patiently, mindfully, moving fast because you have chosen to.
It seems so many writers, teachers and thinkers which speak of mindfulness these days are merely repeating the same message of spiritual teachers from long ago: whether one is moving fast or slow, be conscious of where you are, who you are and why you are doing what you are doing. This consciousness is at the heart of what we Christians call faith.
 
Faith isn’t really a set of beliefs but a way of existing in the world, a way of trusting God. The preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor described this change in her own spiritual journey:
 
I…arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so.
 
This kind of faith, the trust kind, the kind we rely on when we either cannot act or don’t know what to do is difficult. It requires courage. Benedictine writer David Steindl-Rast puts it this way:
 
To have faith does not primarily mean believing something, but rather believing in someone. Faith is trust. It takes courage to trust. The opposite of faith is not disbelief, but distrust, fear. Fear makes us cling to anything within reach. Fear clings even to beliefs… Faith is the courage to respond gratefully to every given situation, out of trust in the Giver.
 
These anxious times cause us to hit the refresh buttons on our browsers, look at every news alert on our phones and obsessively watch cable news, but none of these actions offers us peace. Pointless activity is not the same as purposeful living. Patience generated by trust in God reveals to us when it is best to do something and when it is best to do little. The paradox of accomplishing more by doing less seems unsatisfying when we are afraid and angry, but out of such paradoxes God reveals to us peace and purpose.
 
May God grant you the peace of mind to discern when to do more and when to do less.
 
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

     For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of
     God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us,
     created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
     --Ephesians 2:8-10 NRSV

The hospital comedy Scrubs aired on NBC from 2001-2010. As its opening credits rolled, a quirky song played. I could never catch all the words, but the credits ended with the words, “I’m no Superman.” It turns out the song is called “Superman” and its by a band called Lazlo Bone. The chorus of the song goes:

Well, I know what I've been told
You gotta work to feed the soul
​
But I can't do this all on my own
No, I know, I'm no Superman
I'm no Superman

I don’t know anything about this band, and I’m not quite sure how the chorus of this song fits with the verses, but I feel like I need to play this song every morning so it will become an earworm in my head. That way maybe I will remember that I’m no Superman.

You’d think all I’d need to do is look in the mirror to realize I would not look good in blue tights and red cape, but you see I was a “good kid.” In my nuclear family, I learned that getting praise and affection from my parents meant being a “good kid.” That idea transferred over into my spirituality (as our relationships with our parents often do) so that I felt that to get God’s love I likewise had to be a “good kid.” I heard lessons about grace and not earning God’s love, but those ideas never really sunk in. My identity and spirituality became a twisted sort of egotism. On the one hand, I felt like everything was up to me in terms of being good enough to prove my worth before God and the world, but at the same time I knew that I was never good enough. I had no sense that people loved me for who I was and I didn’t really believe God loved me just as I was either. I had to be a sort of Superman to prove to myself, everyone else and God that I was good.

When one lives with the belief that deep down one is really not good enough that leads to a lot of unhealthy behaviors. Serving others and not being selfish becomes a great way to deny yourself what you need to be a healthy person and to have healthy relationships. When you believe you have to keep giving to others, because deep down you have to earn their love and prove you are worthy of their love, then you quickly become a burned out and even bitter person. When one needs to prove their self-worth, then everything becomes a competition lest someone else do something better proving you aren’t as good as you feel you must be. Living this way, one gives not out of one’s best self but out of one’s worst self, a self ruled by insecurity, fear and constant feelings of inferiority. It’s a strangely defeating to feel like one must be Superman all the while believing that you are the farthest thing from it.

Parker Palmer writes about this kind of life in his amazing book, Let Your Life Speak:

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless—a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other’s need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless but faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need.

I have often fallen into the trap of feeling like I couldn’t let go of a commitment I had made, because I feared it would reveal my own sense of failure. It has been hard for me to trust myself, my true self that God created in God’s image, to admit that often others can do things better than I can. By continuing to grit it out from fear of being seen as inadequate, I refuse to trust others and to trust that God will work through them.

Minister and writer Tony Robinson wrote in a United Church of Christ Daily Devotional about this kind of mixed up arrogance:

Following me, said Jesus, means self-renunciation. According to the dictionary, self-renunciation is, "rejecting, repudiating, sacrificing, giving up your self."

This business of self-renunciation is a tricky matter. I can think of whole lot of ways to get it wrong:

what I want or need isn’t important
I should always take care of others (but never myself)
my job is to fix you, make you successful, get you sober, make you happy, etc.
if I don’t do this, no one will
if I can just be perfect, everything will be fine

One form of self-renunciation that feels real, if hard, important and Jesus-like, is to give up on being the grim bookkeeper working away at keeping the ledgers of life’s rights and wrongs on everyone else. Throw out the books. Close the accounts.  Renounce your need to say or prove that you are right and he/ she is wrong. Renounce your intricate and truly tiresome strategies for justifying yourself or making yourself look good. Give it up to Jesus by whose grace alone you and I are healed and restored.

I grew up Southern Baptist, and every worship service had to have an invitation hymn at its end. As the soft music played, it was a time for the “unsaved” to walk the aisle down to the front in order “to accept Christ as Lord and savior.” There was a section in the hymnal called “Invitation Hymns” and I knew them all by heart, because as a preacher’s kid I had been to a whole lot of worship services. In the hymnal I grew up with there were two versions of the hymn Just as I am, one had four verses and the other had at least six—it felt like twenty! When the longer version was selected, I knew it was going to be a long time until lunch.

The words of that hymn, however, which spoke of God loving me and accepting me “Just as I am” never hit home. As I look back on them, I realize I’m still trying to learn the lesson that I don’t’ have to be Superman, because God loves me for who I am.

Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt
Fighting and fears within without
O Lamb of God, I come, I come

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

     “42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of
     bread and to prayer.”
     Acts 2:42

In this time of Covid our breaking of bread together has been limited. Unfortunately, this pandemic has thrown a wrench in the way we usually gather and how we celebrate Christian Fellowship. True enough, we have an open service and we still take Communion each week, in our own way, but the chance to get together and break bread in person has been greatly curtailed. And we justly grieve this loss.

This year our getting together for fellowship through the fun of Trunk or Treat has been cancelled. We have not been able to gather for church dinners or even Sunday School classes. If we think on it, so many of our ‘normal’ activities of fellowship have been disrupted, that it feels as if our fellowship has been lost and may never return. But there is good news!

This time of separation will not last forever. There will come a time when once again we will be able to congregate together and break bread. A time when we will use the Life Center for dinners and Sunday School classes will meet again in person. There is coming a time when this cursed pandemic will be tamed, and we will once again be able to venture out freely without fear of infection. This season will pass.

More than that, the act of fellowship goes deeper than dinners and handshakes during morning service. Fellowship has a much deeper and significant role in our relationship with one another and with God.

     “3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship
     with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
​     I John 1:3

The early disciples travelled throughout the countryside building new churches, leading converts to a relationship with Christ. And as they did so, they seldom stayed in one place for long. Often in his letters to the churches Paul expresses his sorrow that he could not be with them at just that moment. But always he reminded them that when we are in Christ, the Spirit brings us together regardless of the physical distance.

“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard….” John says. Just as we have proclaimed to one another over time our witness of God’s wonders in our lives. We did not come into this pandemic with an empty pouch. We have stories and examples of how Christ has affected our lives. Stories we have shared. Loves we have expressed. Prayers that have been answered beyond belief. We come, just as John and the early disciples, with history of Jesus in our lives; having made a difference in our outlook and our hope for tomorrow. We come full of the Spirit who was sent by Him who overcame the world, Jesus Christ.

We are in a season of a new fellowship. A season of separation, but not of loss. Though we are unable to gather as once we did, we have a fellowship in the Spirit that overcomes every aspect of this world. We are united in a bond of companionship which holds Christ at its center and this bond cannot be broken by a pandemic. We hold a fellowship with God the Father and His son Jesus Christ that cannot be torn apart by physical separation. Christ came to Earth to bridge the divide that separated us from fellowship with God. He stepped into the ‘void’ created by theology and broke down the barriers that kept us from a personal relationship with the Creator of all things.

The glory of this moment is that we have the Spirit, gifting us with a deeper fellowship than what can be found on a Sunday morning. We have a daily fellowship with the Father and when we open our hearts and minds to the vastness of His love, we have a fellowship with one another that no distance, no illness; that not even death can sever.

When we pray for one another, when the memory of a loved one passes our thoughts, when we speak out a name of a fellow traveler, it is not in vain, but rather it is solidarity with the Christ who has set us all free. Our fellowship may look different these days, but it is not lost. We are together in this moment in the eye of God who makes all things work for His glory.

Kathy Hendrix

     But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into
     Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is
     equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in
     love.
     --Ephesians 4:15-16 NRSV

What brings a new person to church?

It’s a tough question to answer, because in most churches like PHCC, the members have been a part of the church so long they barely remember what originally made them visit. In conversations I’ve had with PHCC folks, many people cite two factors: invitation from friends and family or looking for a Disciples church when they relocated nearby. As denominations decline (unfortunately the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ is not immune to this decline), fewer people than ever look at a church’s denomination. What hasn’t changed, however is the influence of family and friends.

I recall one church member telling me they came to PHCC, because they worked at TWA with a church member who regularly shared what PHCC meant to them. When that coworker decided to look for a church, they remembered the good things the church member had said. The lesson: church members who share with others about what their church means to them attract new members. If church folks aren’t saying good things about their churches, then something is amiss.

Throughout my career I have heard from older members who are retired and who’s social circles have shrunk, “All my friends have their own churches.” That may be true, but the other people in your lives may not have a faith community. Your beautician, barber, repair man, the staff at your retirement community, house cleaner and so on, presuming one actually speaks with them, may need a church. As you share about yourself and your life with others, what do you tell them about what your church means to you? If you don’t share that, why not?

It remains true that your next pastor will have a lot to do with whether or not PHCC attracts new members, but speaking as a minister, I’m convinced pastors have far less influence on new members than people think. I believe church members whose lives are enriched by being a part of a church will naturally share that experience with others. That sharing will be the most important factor in whether or not new people come to PHCC. The most charismatic and dynamic pastor in the world cannot attract and keep new people at a church if the congregation is not genuinely alive in a spiritual sense.

Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life (the best polling out there on religion) did a study in 2018 which showed the top things people are looking for in a new church:

82% good quality sermons
79% feeling welcomed by leaders
74% style of worship
70% location
56% education for children
48% having friends or family in the congregation
42% availability of opportunities to volunteer
25% other factors

This polling doesn’t quite match my experience in church’s like PHCC. Yes, people want a good sermon. There are few occasions anymore where people actually sit and listen to someone talking for 15 minutes or more, so the preaching had better be good. That being said, I’m convinced that’s not why people come back to church for a second visit, at least not the kind of people who actually get involved in community. I’ve had people attend worship in the churches I’ve served largely because they like my sermons, but few, if any, of them got involved in the church much less became members. I think what matters most of all as to whether people will show up at church and keep showing up is whether they feel welcome and included.

Think about it, most long-term members at PHCC have been through a number of ministers with mixed experiences. But what has kept people involved in the life of the church are the relationships. Connections with other members are the biggest reason people stay in a church. From my experience in ministry, a good preacher may get someone in the door, but even the best preachers can’t keep people from going out the back door and never coming back. Relationships are what build a church.

I realize I have not experienced PHCC in its “normal” form. The pandemic has severely limited what we can do together. I’m not sure what the future looks like for PHCC or any other church after the pandemic, but I am sure that two things will still matter most of all for the future health of the congregation: a membership that naturally shares about what their church means to them with others and a membership that builds relationships through small groups, volunteering and social gatherings.  In the future, how these connections happen may change—for example more may happen online, but those connections must happen if a church is to grow. Of course, a qualified and talented pastor matters for the vitality of this church, but even the best minister cannot attract new members when the members who are already there do not experience spiritual transformation.

In my career, as the minister I’ve been expected to be a sort of savior for declining churches, as if I had a box of magic tricks that would automatically bring new people to the church. I’ve tried a lot of things with churches—marketing and advertising, online outreach, ministry in the community and more. While all of those things are important, the success of each of them depended on what the church was already doing and who the church already was. I can look back and see how we spent a lot of energy on my part and that of key leaders, along with a lot of money, and I now know that every effort’s success depended on the spiritual health of the congregation.

Churches without members dedicated to growing spiritually in their own lives are not going to grow as a faith community. Churches without strong relationships among its members are not going to attract new people. A new pastor matters, but not as much as church members themselves.

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

     Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed
     away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out
     of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice
     from the throne saying,

     “See, the home of God is among mortals.
     He will dwell with them;
     they will be his peoples,
     and God himself will be with them;
     he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
     Death will be no more;
     mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
     for the first things have passed away.”
     --Revelation 21:1-4 NRSV

Recently in Sunday morning worship one of our elders shared about how she was watching post-apocalyptic movies as a coping mechanism during the COVID-10 pandemic. She and I spoke briefly about our favorite post-apocalyptic films following the service. Like her, I love watching movies and TV shows about zombie apocalypses. Unlike her I’m not one for movies about viral pandemics like Contagion. I was never very good at science class and chemistry baffled me. Also, maybe I just have a violent streak, and it’s more satisfying for me to imagine blowing apart zombies with shotguns. (I’m not sure if that’s a good thing for a pastor to admit or not.)

I’ve been a fan of post-apocalyptic movies for a long time. I’m pretty sure it was a way for coping with my childhood and teenage fears about the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union and the United States destroying the world with nuclear weapons. It was somehow comforting to watch The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and see people surviving after the world fell apart (albeit it in a whole lot of leather and punk haircuts).

Disaster films have probably always been a means of addressing the anxiety in a particular culture whether it was the Cold War seen through the lens of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the tumult of the Civil Rights era as seen in Oscar Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or diseases like mad cow disease in 28 Days Later or swine flue in Train to Busan. Our cinematic depictions of the end of the world as we know it reveal to us our own current anxieties. Seeing plucky protagonists survive the apocalypse can be a catharsis.

In recent days, I’ve begun to wonder if we have reached a limit to our violent end of the world stories. At what point do our fantasies about the future permeate a culture enough to shape the way we view our own future? When both conservatives and liberals have been buying up guns and ammo afraid of post-election violence, maybe we need to slow down on imbibing stories that depict the world teetering on collapse.

I recently read a piece by Cory Doctorow, a sci-fi and techno thriller author, who says he has changed the way he writes about the future because things are getting so bad in American culture. He writes that the idea that we are on the brink of collapsing into Mad Max: Fury Road just isn’t true.

It makes for good stories, but those stories don’t reflect the truth of the world as I see it. Humanity is, on balance, good. We have done remarkable things. The fact that we remain here today, after so many disasters in our species’ history, is a reminder that we are a species of self-rescuing princesses—characters who save one another in crisis, rather than turning on ourselves.

Doctorow points to books like Rebecca Solnit’s 2009 non-fiction book A Paradise Built in Hell, which despite the ominous title, demonstrates that “crises are when our species shines, moments of great personal and group sacrifice.”  So, Doctorow is now writing novels that explore the very real threats to our world while also depicting heroes coming together and meeting those challenges.

I think Doctorow is not alone in this opinion. I was drawn to a new series on Amazon Prime Video called Utopia which promises lots of end of the world fun, but reviews have been somewhat negative. In the age of over 200,000 people dead from COVID-19 and predictions of violence the day after the presidential election, stories of mass violence can seem tasteless. Maybe I’ll wait until next year to watch that series when hopefully stories of societal upheaval feel more like fiction again.

I’ve ben struggling to recall whether any of the apocalyptic movies, TV shows and books I’ve read actually depict society coming together to meet the challenge of the world’s demise. The only one I can think of is the book World War Z by Max Brooks (Ignore the movie adaptation starring Brad Piit,  it’s nothing like the book.) Brooks is the son of Hollywood icons Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. He has spoken extensively about how he was inspired by his parents’ generation who defeated fascism in WWII. (Remember when we all pretty much agreed Nazis were bad?) In World War Z, he tells of America’s response to the zombie menace in terms similar to the war effort of the “Greatest Generation.” Society mobilizes, experts are listened to, people are heroic and sacrifice their own safety for one another. Maybe we need more stories like that these days to remind us how we can work together to make the world a better place rather than just sliding into collapse.

All this rumination about post-apocalyptic stories, has also got me thinking about the stories Christians tell about the end of the world. The dominant narrative is one of judgement, destruction and disaster. Christian versions of disaster movies have come in the form of A Thief in the Night and the Left Behind books and films. Both present stories about the Rapture (which isn’t even in the Bible) as the beginning of God destroying the world. No doubt the Bible contains apocalyptic imagery, but the different images do not speak in one voice about how it will happen and who it happens to. The only thing all those passages do agree upon is that God sets everything aright in the end.

Christians profess that the ultimate ending of the world is up to God; only God can fully make right what has gone wrong. Yet, at the same time, Christians also profess that the Kingdom of God is not just a future reality but available in the present when love occurs, mercy is shown and those who have the least are made whole. God’s ultimate victory isn’t fully accomplished until whenever time ends, but glimpses of it occur in the here and now when those whom God has created demonstrate sacrificial love for others, whether or not they claim to believe in God or not.

In this time of fear, maybe our culture needs more hopeful stories. We don’t need to run to the nearest gun shop and load up on ammo, because despite how bad humans can sometimes be, we are usually not that bad. In the same way, maybe Christians need to be telling more hopeful stories too. Our stories need to be about a God who never abandons us, who cares for us in this life and the next and who ultimately will create a new heaven and a new earth where there is room enough for everyone.

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

​     Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a
     single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
     --John 12:24 NRSV

It’s October, but lately here n the KC metro area it has felt like June with temperatures in the high 80’s. With the pandemic and times of lockdown including kids not being in school, it has already been difficult to keep track of the passing of time this year. Why should autumn obey the seasonal norms when it’s been so disorienting this year?

I’m not a big fan of autumn. I like the cooler temperatures after the mugginess of August in the Midwest, but I’m keenly aware winter is coming. Once the leaves fall from the trees, the landscape of the Midwest turns brown and dead-looking. Sure the first snow falls are fun and pretty (if they ever come which is questionable in these days of climate change), but soon the snow turns to piles of gray slush. Spring seems to take too long in coming. Autumn, therefore, is a season of anticipatory grief for me.

I’m glad I’m not alone in feeling this way. One of my favorite authors, Parker Palmer, writes that autumn is a season of melancholy for him. He writes:

I’m a professional melancholic, and for years my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer’s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that’s life-giving about fall and its sensuous delights.

Yet, Palmer isn’t content to just feel bummed about autumn the way I do. He wrote a book about the value of paradoxes in our lives, so he has learned to appreciate that even though autumn is a season of things dying, it holds the promise of future life (this is a long quotation, but I promise it is worth reading):

Today, at age 76 — as I weather the autumn of my own life — I find nature a trustworthy guide. It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But, as I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the most difficult of times.  

Looking back, I see how the job I lost pushed me to find work that was mine to do, how the “road closed” sign turned me toward terrain I’m glad I traveled, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to find new sources of meaning. In each of these experiences, it felt like something was dying, and so it was. And yet deep-down, amid all the falling, silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown.

The hopeful notion that new life is hidden in dying is surely reinforced by the visual glories of autumn. What artist would paint a deathbed scene with the vibrant and vital palette nature uses? Perhaps death possesses a grace that we who fear dying, who find it ugly and even obscene, cannot see. How shall we understand nature’s testimony that dying itself — as devastating as we know it can be — contains the hope of a certain beauty?

As Christians, we profess to believe that death is only the transition from one way of living into another way of living. This truth we call resurrection, and it is a truth available to us not just at the end of our lives but in the midst of our lives as things die and we discover new life afterward. If you’re like me and autumn feels like a time of anticipatory grief for winter, perhaps we need to shift our perception about autumn.

Autumn’s beauty offers us a chance to appreciate the glory of life in this moment. It’s lesson is that some of life’s most beautiful and even glorious moments are ones that are not permanent. If we are so busy grieving the certain and eventual end of our careers, the time when our children are home with us before the enter adulthood, and even our very lives, we never stop and take in the wonderful moments available to us in the here and now. Autumn offers us not just a lesson on future life beyond capital “D” death and lowercase “d” deaths that occur in our lives, it also offers us a lesson in capital “L” life here and now as we take in the beaty happening right now.

Whether you are able to get outside and look at the changing leaves or you can only move yourself to a window in order to look outside at the foliage, take some time to look at the changing leaves and the lesson autumn offers us. If you find yourself getting melancholy like I do, that’s okay. Take a moment, feel that feeling, then take a breath and open yourself up to something new God wants to show you about this season.

One of the daily email devotionals I subscribe to sent out this poem today by Ted Loder from his book Guerillas of Grace, it expresses well a prayer we can offer as this season changes.

O extravagant God,
in this ripening, red-tinged autumn,
waken in me a sense of joy
in just being alive,
joy for nothing in general
except everything in particular;
joy in sun and rain
mating with earth to birth a harvest;
joy in soft light
through shyly disrobing trees;
joy in acolyte moon
setting halos around processing clouds;
joy in the beating of a thousand wings
mysteriously knowing which way is warm;
joy in wagging tails and kids’ smiles
and in this spunky old city;
joy in the taste of bread and wine,
the smell of dawn,
a touch,
a song,
a presence;
joy in having what I cannot live without --
other people to hold and cry and laugh with
joy in love,
in you;
and that all at first and last
is grace.
—Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

     “8so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with
     you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”
     --I Thessalonians 2:8

For many of us the Spirit has been active in our lives, and when we think on it, we find ourselves living truly glorious existences. When we think of gifts, we think of receiving and giving. Just as we have received, we have a responsibility to give back. As Paul suggest in the verse above, when we love we are delighted to share “not only the gospel”, “but our lives”.

In our walk toward Bold Hospitality, we have been granted many gifts and one of those gifts is mentoring.

Mentoring can take many shapes and forms. Currently, we are limited in the things we can do together, but that doesn’t mean we can’t begin planning for the time when we can come together. An area we would like to build on is reaching out to our community in ways that impact their lives. And mentoring can have a very large impact on our community’s life.

Over this period of the pandemic pray and think of ways we can reach out to those in our area. We might be able to build life skills for teenagers about to leave (or who have recently left) school. Things like, how to set a budget, balance a check book and how to set goals.

We can lead or assist in programs aimed at young parents on how to care for their growing families. Think of people you know; what are they needing? Think of things you wish someone had sat you down and explained when you were young, these are the areas where we can mentor.

What about cooking skills, meal planning, even vacation planning. There really are a multitude of areas where we can offer training to those who make their home in our neighborhood.

As we pray and think about the needs of our community, we can begin preparing for the days when we will once again be able to fully open our doors to the public. The most important piece of this is that all of us can be involved in mentoring. We don’t have to have special skills; we only need to be willing to share our experiences.

We have been called to be followers of Christ. We are called to be Christ like in our dealings with everyone. And the great joy is that we have the Spirit to guide us in our reaching out to the world.

Let us care for our community and share out of love, not just the gospel of redeeming grace, but also the joy of life that we have found in Christ.

Kathy Hendrix