Reconciliation, Ecumenism, Missional, and Martyrdom

This has been edited 3/19 - 3/20/2013, mostly the edit was in terms of readability and grammar  an update was added at the end. LEK
In this season of Christmas I have been thinking a bit about the name of this worshiping community. As we started Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler we chose the name for two reasons: First we wanted to be clear that in starting this ecumenical congregation we weren't reconciling our denominations, but we were lead to this because we ourselves had, through various ways, including the work of the World Council of Churches, found that Jesus Christ was already accomplishing this reconciliation. Second, we felt lead to be a place of reconciliation not only between denominations, but also a place where people who were alienated from the church and God due to the divisions and actions of fellow Christians could hear again the message of reconciliation and be so reconciled.

As those of you who have been part of Reconciler know, the institutional and denominational aspects of our original vision never materialized: We were unable to recruit from congregations of our respective denominations, and our idea of affiliating as a congregation with the three denominations of the three original pastors hasn't come to fruition and for the past year we have been functioning with the understanding that this will probably never happen.

What did happen was that we became a place for a few who had been alienated from God and the church to find their way to us and find a place where they could find God and Christ and participate in the life of the church. This has meant that some people have been apart of our worshiping community for a time and moved on to other things.

I have come to see Reconciler as an outpost in our urban post-Christian, post-Christendom culture and society. A place of interchange and sending: sometimes sending people deeper into our emergent cultural reality and sometimes sending people back into the institutional realities of the Christian landscape. Those of us who remain seem to be moving back and forth between an ever shifting cultural landscape and the massive and firm institutions and identities of our denominations, that in fact make possible this little outpost on the edge, or in the midst of emergence.

What we didn't see six and seven years ago, was that most congregations of whatever denomination already bear the fruit of a century of ecumenical work, cooperation, and dialog. Whatever one may feel about the weakening of denominational loyalty and identity among laity, and however lamentable the lack of awareness of the work of the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical endeavors may be, the dissolution of impermeable membranes of denominations for the laity is largely due to ecumenism. Perhaps not what we heady ecumenists thought would be the fruit, but it is the fruit nonetheless. When our institutions stopped (for the most part) claiming to be the Truth, when we began to admit that those other believers in Jesus just might also know God and Christ (however imperfectly from our perspective) it perhaps was inevitable (in conjunction with other cultural factors such as our high degree of mobility), that many would find denominational distinction and loyalty unnecessary.  Anecdotal evidence from talking to pastors from across denominational lines and  pastors in my own denomination this seems to be the new reality: a growing number parishes and congregations in Protestantism are ecumenical congregations. Institutionally and in name they may be from a particular denomination and call pastors only from that denomination but the backgrounds and even the theology and spirituality that the laity bring with them is often not that of the denomination of the congregation's official affiliation. I think this is something to celebrate and not lament, though it is lamentable if we don't seize this opportunity and simply allow the situation to be a of watering down of our theology so as to never reveal possible differences in these de facto ecumenical congregations.

That though is another post: What the above means is that we probably had our original idea of bringing members together from differing denominations because it was actually already happening: getting laity from differing protestant denominations to worship together really was a fairly tame idea, as Protestant laity were already choosing to do so, choosing a congregation based on other things than theology and denominational identity and loyalty.

However, does this mean we are all reconciled now! Hardly, there are other divisions some emerging others that have always been there, modernist/liberal vs. fundamentalist/conservative, racial and ethnic, class etc. I think to some degree the ignoring of denominational loyalty is in part due to various realignments in american religion.

What all this means for Reconciler's vision is that we are left with being open to God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ. A place where some are willing to retain institutional connections while also fully engaging a culture society and Christian landscape in transition and emergence.

The common institutional form of the congregation as articulated in most denominational structures isn't well suited for this sort of space of in-between,  border, and outpost (the experience of Reconciler seems to indicate). The American denomination and congregation is a worshiping community plus, as often as not with emphasis on the plus. Much good has come from this understanding and in certain contexts still is an important expression of the church. But what if Christian faith and the faith of the church and the work of the church is always already simply worship, and being sent from those gathered together as a doxological community. This too isn't new, the trendy term missional is attached to such an idea. but mission and missional are perhaps too freighted with colonial baggage, too activist oriented, too certain that we who are sent aren't the ones in need of reconciliation. Even missional is too tied to Christendom and has difficulty grasping that our sending, our suffering, our work is our reconciliation and our salvation. As protestants we forget that as important as God's declaration and accomplishment of our justification, salvation and reconciliation in the blood of Christ Cross is, it is in our own living out the work of Christ in the world that we bring to completion the work of Christ. This is martyrdom. We the gathered and sent people of God are the space the locus of God working out what God accomplished in Jesus Christ. Our very lives are to be the place of reconciling work of Christ. The Martyrs in their deaths and witness were completing and filling out the suffering of Christ, which is the means of our reconciliation with each other and to God.

Not all Christians even in the early church were called to martyrdom, not all are called to these boundary spaces in our current cultural landscape, but some of us are, some of us need these spaces to be able to encounter Christ again for the first time. Some of us need them for our own reconciliation, so that we may fulfill and fill out Christ's passion, that we may find our selves reconciled to God and our fellow human beings. This I believe is the charism that has emerged around this idea and Name Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. More on where this charism may lead us in the next month.  (The more did come but not in blog from, it came eventually as A Little Rule for the Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler, and 4 and then 7 people working to found the Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler, LEK 3/20/2013)

Reflection's on the Insruection Tour stop in Chicago

Reconciler has some connections to the Emergent Church movement. And Peter Rollins and company of the Insurection tour are somewhere in the mix though to what degree they so self identify I am not sure. In any case I went to the tour stop at Trace bar last night. On my personal blog I wrote a post on the experience check it out if your interested.

Preparing for Lent: Update Reflection

I hope this season of Ordinary Time after the Epiphany is one in which the light of Christ is shining into your life, providing you with light to see the way, and even exposing things in your life that have been hidden.
Lent is rapidly approaching. Ash Wednesday is February 17th. Lent is the time that church prepares to recieve again the mystery of salvation. the preparation for the church's greatest feast Easter, where we remember that Christ for our sake passed over from death to life.- That Christ "..beat down death by death." As the Orthodox liturgy of Easter proclaims.

In preparation to receive again this mystery the church fasts, and engages in other disciplines, that are contemplative and encourage self-reflection. In Lent the church also identifies with the suffering of Christ, his temptation and overcoming of temptation and sin in the dessert. So Lent is a time to allow God to come and meet us at the point of our sin. God comes not to condemn us but to further liberate us from those things in our lives that continue to bind us, that we still hold on to even though they are destructive and bring death into our lives, our work, our relationships. In the day to day bustle of life these things can at times seem to be small things, and yet they are contradictions within ourselves as followers of Christ. Lent then is a time of grace where we can return to God, in those very places where we have run or hid ourselves from God. It is a time of grace to discover through the illumination of the Spirit areas of our life still bound to Sin and Death, which we have possibly never noticed before.

Allow God this Lent through Lenten disciplines of fasting and contemplation, through pastoral conversation and confession, to prepare you for receiving again the great mystery of our Faith. In this season after the Epiphany we have celebrated Christ as the light that shines in darkness. Lent encourages us to let that light shine into those areas of our life where we still cling to darkness. May the Life, Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ sustain us and embolden us as we face again our deep and persistent need for God's liberating love.

In Christ,
Larry Kamphausen
Pastor
Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler
For announcements follow this link:
'Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler: Update'

Advent Reflection: The Gift of God's Self

We are in the third week of Advent and winter weather has come to Chicago. Snow and cold don't slow us down, things keep going and there is the frantic preparations and gift buying for Christmas celebrations. This season perhaps demonstrates for us most starkly the ways in which we are a post-Christian culture. A Christian celebration that also borrowed from pre-Christian European and Mediterranean celebrations around the Winter Solstice, has morphed into at its best a hopeful celebration of family love and hope, attached to gift giving.

As Christians, we can at times find it difficult to connect with the original meanings of our Christian traditions when they are now put to different purposes and meanings. We can bemoan and attempt to challenge these changes or can accept them as fact and simply note the connections and disjunctions between the Christian celebration of Christmas and their cultural American appropriations and adaptations. Keeping the season of Advent is a way to do this. At the time when our culture is in the "holiday" season we are asked by the church year to slow down wait anticipate the coming holiday season of Christmas and the Epiphany. Another way to do this is to understand the meaning of gift giving associated with Christmas. As a Christian tradition gift giving is to be an expression of gratitude over what God gave us through the Son becoming human in Jesus of Nazareth. The gift of God's self was given to us and the whole cosmos. This of course challenges the way in which gifts are exchanged especially if they are only given to those we know and like; God's giving of God's self to that which was and is estranged from God asks us to be more expansive in our giving. If gift giving is an expression of gratitude and imitation at a time that we celebrate God's gift, our giving of gifts perhaps needs to move beyond familial and cultural expectations of who is a recipient of this act. But also we are reminded that while this particular ritual of gift giving marks a particular feast of the church year the posture of self donation is one, as those Baptized into Christ that is to exemplify our own daily life. As such it is something we grow into ever more as we are continually filled with Spirit and grow in Grace and Truth. The ritual of gift giving to family and friends is then a small gesture and a token sign of the divine posture of self donation that we are called to emulate in our daily lives as members of the body of Christ.

In Christ

Pastor Larry
Church of Jesus Christ Reconciler

Giving and the Poor Widow

This past Sunday the Gospel reading was of Jesus teaching in the Temple condemning the practices of the Scribes and lifting up the example of a widow whom he observed give two small coins which was all she had to live on. I did not preach this Sunday, the Community of the Holy Trinity had it's annual community retreat at St Gregory's Abbey. I had been able to arrange for Rev. Dave Hedges to come out to preach and preside. So I heard his take on this story as well as Abbot Andrew's take on this story. Both Abbot Andrew and Father Dave questioned our use of the story of the widow as an example of sacrificial giving. Abbot Andrew was careful not to completely throw out the widow as exemplar, but qualified this interpretation with calling on us to look at the larger context of the story including Jesus' saying in condemnation of the Scribes who live of taking advantage of the generosity of widows. What I took away from Abbot Andrew's sermon was that the widow's exemplary generosity is tragic in that it was not necessary but occured because of injustices in the system, and the practices of some religious leaders. This should lead us to examine our wealth and incomes to see if and how we benefit from the poverty of others. Jesus call's attention to a person who would be otherwise ignored to show disparity and reorient our thinking about not only what we give but how we have gained what we have.

Father Dave, turned our attention away from the widow as exemplar of sacrificial giving: he was retooling the sermon from his stewardship sermon he gave in the morning to his parish. So his sermon was still concerned for what this passage might have to say to us about giving, and was less concerned with Abbot Andrew's emphasis on letting the reason for the Widow's poverty and exemplary generosity teach us something about the Gospel and our responsibility in the world. Father Dave directed us to see how Jesus turns our attention to the proportions and not the amounts. The proportions are disproportionate: The wealthy give large amounts but hardly notice the offering and are praised for their generosity, and the widow gives her whole living, and because it is such a small amount goes unnoticed except that Jesus points it out. The point is the great disparity, the proportions are unjust, it should not be looking at the amount but the proportion and a widow should not have to give all that she has to live on.

What I take from these two interpretations of the Gospel text is that in giving we are to be mindful. Mindful not only of what we give and in what proportion but of how we come to have what we have live on and to give. We are not only to give proportionately (not all of what we have to live on nor an unnoticeable proportion of what we have, even if it is a large amount) unconcerned about the amount, but also with the awareness of how we have attained what we have to give. Thus giving has to do with how we live, how we make money, how we develop our abilities and what we do with both our money and abilities. We can be and are called to not live as those Scribes who impoverished Widows by making a living off their disproportionate giving. This is certainly a challenge when it is not always clear where what we have comes from and who may have been impoverished so that we may have our way of life. The Fair Trade movement is one way that we can seek to not only be aware of injustices behind things we have or purchase but also seek share in more just economic processes and avoid economic processes that in the very least at their origin keep people in poverty. However, there is also the challenge of the reality of Slavery in our time where slaves are often used to cultivate cocoa, that is then purchased by Chocolate manufacturers. This slavery is hidden partially at least because until recently people were not asking questions, and is coming to our awareness as we realize that slavery is alive and well around the world though not in the exact form we are most aware of from our courses in history. Jesus calls us to awareness of disparity and injustice, and to seek ways of living that do not require the life of others and their impoverishment. The point though is not to necessarily be aware of all the twists and turns of everything one buys or has, but to be mindful of how one lives and its effects on others, and to give not out of a wealth based on injustice but to live our live proportionately within bounds and with an eye to others and awareness of the poor.

Revisting Sharing our Faith

A month ago I reflected outreach as sharing our faith. At our last council meeting I asked us to reflect on events that we could have that would allow us to share with others our faith. Thinking more on this I have been wondering how best to keep anything we plan to do as natural and organic to our life together as a congregation. This line of thought is trying to think through why our one Beer Bread and the Bible was something we as a congregation found enriching to our faith and community life and a place where our friends Christian and non-christian felt welcome to come and participate. There are couple things that I think were important for the Beer Bread and the Bible: we were interested in reading James and the in the themes of James, it was a moment of outreach but it was not for the purpose of getting members for Reconciler.

As I push us to think more about outreach, I feel we can begin feel pressure of something in addition to our Bible studies and fellowship as a congregation. Thus another thing we need to add to our busy schedules. Yet, I am hopping that our approach can be more integrated and integral when it comes to outreach. So,I keep coming back to the one Beer Bread and the Bible is not because I think we have to replicate exactly what Jeremy and Charity did in hosting and having it, but it emerged organically from both Jeremy and Charity's desires but also the character of the congregation at the time. It was something people who did not attend Reconciler came to and felt comfortable attending without any push to be part of the congregation. Also the reading of James and then discussing was a Bible study that it allowed people with differing levels of experience with and understanding of the Bible to enter in and come away with something. Lastly it was a time of fellowship for our congregation but also with friends who were either Christian or not Christian. These three things tell me that it wasn't something we added on but something that came from who we were, and we wanted to share it with others, without expectation or strings.

What I feel we can learn from this is that anything we do for outreach first should be something that we want to do and are interested in. Second it should be an opportunity for us as a congregation to connect with each other. Third it needs to be open to others participation even if they never attend Reconciler. If we keep these three things in mind perhaps some of the pressure is off of "creating" an outreach event.

I am thinking that as we plan to gather in September to talk about Christian faith and Baptism as Chrissy and Will prepare to be baptized, and as we (0r I) solidify what we want to study for the fall and as we have potlucks, that we see at least some of these as places to invite our friends and acquaintances as well as times for us to gather as a congregation. This is also how our presence at the Glennwood Arts Festival came about we have had visual artists as members of Reconciler, I am a painter, so it made sense to be there, as our congregations changes and grows perhaps there are other ways we can integrate members talents and involvement with Reconciler's visible presence in the community.

Reconciler Update

We continue to be in a time of transition and change that we began last year when we began to question the necessity of the committee structure as a means to be church together. This has lead to a streamlining of our council and the creation of more fluid forms of being together and working together as a church community. As we have made these changes and have found other challenges to our original vision conversation with the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and the Central Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church has picked up again. We find ourselves in a good place to continue the conversation of continued relationship with the three denominations even as we are without an Episcopal Priest and have put on hold our search for an American Baptist pastor.
A week ago today I met with the Rev. Cannon Scott Hayashi, Canon to the Ordinary of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago (A Canon is a person who may be lay or ordained who serves on a Bishop’s staff or a cathedral. The Canon to the Ordinary is a person whose ministry is directly answerable to the bishop and who can function as a sort of chief of staff). We had a lively and helpful discussion about Reconciler and the possibilities of a continuing relationship with the Diocese. In the coming months as we reflect together on who we are as a congregation and how we wish to continue to be an ecumenical congregation Rev. Canon Hayashi's thoughts and reflections will be helpful. Though in our conversation it was made very clear that the way I and the founding pastors had conceived of affiliation with the three denominations a little over four years ago is not a possibility. So, as we live into some of the changes of the past year and decide how we want to move forward these changes I think our in line with what the three denominations we have been in conversation with about affiliation will be able to accept and may lead us to a more creative way of connection with Christians of various traditions outside our small congregation.
Also, Rev. Jolene Bergstorm Calrson is planning to visit us and Preside at Table on May 17th. Jolene has attempted to visit us several times in the past year and a half and has ended up have various scheduling conflicts that prevented the visit. The Central Conference remains supportive of Reconciler and we will have an opportunity to meet Jolene and let her get to know us a little better in a couple of weeks.
So in this season of Easter there is life but like when the disciples encountered the living Risen Jesus of Nazareth it is also life that at least I was not expecting. But then Resurrection life is like that, I suppose.
Announcements:
Rev. Jolene Bergstrom Carlson, Associate Superintendent of the Central Conference of the ECC will be visiting us and presiding at Table Sunday May 17th.

This Wednesday May 6th members of Reconciler are providing the meal for the Community meal with Immanuel Lutheran Church. Come and join us at 6 pm.
Following the meal The Community of the Holy Trinity* is leading a Vespers service using Taize music at 7 PM. Holy Trinity will lead the 7 pm Evening prayer service at Immanuel service the months of May and June.

You are invited by The Community of the Holy Trinity*to an Ascension Vespers with Holy Communion on Thursday, May 21st at 7 pm in the side Chapel of Immanuel Lutheran Church.

Our Next Council meeting will be a week from this Thursday, May 14th. 7:30 pm, all are encouraged to attend. Remember if you show up you are a member of council.

* The Community of the Holy Trinity is an intentional community that was founded by Rev. Larry Kamphausen and Kate Setzer Kamphausen in 2003 and another couple. Larry is both the Prior of the community as well as Pastor of Reconciler. While currently only Kate and Larry are both members of Reconciler and of Holy Trinity, over the past 4 years Reconciler and Holy Trinity have shared members from time to time. Holy Trinity has been a partner in ministry with Reconciler in various ways including providing space for our meetings and early on, before Reconciler and Holy Trinity moved to the Immanuel church campus, Reconciler used the community's chapel for its worship space. Currently both Holy Trinity and Reconciler use Immanuel's chapel for their worship space.

The Season of Easter

"Alleluia, Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia."

It is now the Season of Easter. In the Church year we have 40 days of fasting in Lent, as we prepare for and contemplate the way of the Cross, followed by 50 days of celebrating and contemplating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We may not all be at this place of rejoicing and experiencing resurrection during this particular season of Easter, but we celebrate not based on our circumstances but based on what God has done. And we celebrate in hope that we will all know and can know now the power of Resurrection in our lives, even in the midst of grief and death and continued struggle. The reality of Easter, of Christ's Resurrection from the Dead, is our hope when things continue to seem dark. So, it is also important in this festive season of Easter to remember our passage through the three Days, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. We need to keep together the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. One is not more crucial than the other. We don't get at the truth by emphasizing one and ignoring the other. The death and Resurrection of Christ is one act of God, to transform the world and bring an end to sin death and all injustice and unrighteousness. The death and Resurrection of Jesus then aren't primarily about human experience, but about God's acts to return all things to God, that all may be found in the source of all life and who is life and light itself.

May this season of Easter be full of God's joy and peace.

Lent

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. In my sermons in the season after the Epiphany I have been encouraging us to reflect on the meaning of being disciples of Jesus Christ. The accounts of the apostles and disciples in the Gospels I believe are encouraging. The Apostles, who eventually would go out proclaiming that in Jesus Christ God had come and lived in our midst and had begun the transformation of the world and died for this message, in Gospels aren't so bold, and not so sure of themselves. They don't always understand Jesus and often misunderstand very direct things Jesus tells them. At times we all are very much like the disciples in the Gospels. We are on a journey from Glory to Glory, we have encountered Christ and have felt the transformation of that encounter but we aren't always sure we are living into that work of transformation nor are we always sure how to go about it.
Lent in part exists because we need a time to be reminded of certain things. So we come to Ash Wednesday and we repent. We acknowledge the ways we have not lived up to the call of discipleship. We acknowledge that we have been here before and are forgetful. We come to Ash Wednesday and we walk in the desert of Lent with Jesus to be reminded, and to grown in our understanding of the life of faith. We come again to learn what it means to be a Christian, and to meet God and be renewed and refreshed. This is the strange logic of Christian faith in passing through the desert one is refreshed and renewed, passing through death we find life, in letting go of our hard fought and won identities we find our true selves in Christ. None of this is simply a one time thing and then done. We begin at first faith and baptism and we return to this place again and again, hopefully always going deeper finding that our grip on ourselves is less tight, that our sins (no less great) are smaller hidden things we had never noticed before. This is sanctification the realm in which we open ourselves up to grace fully confident of our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. As we journey together this Lent towards the Cross and Resurrection, my hope is that we can begin to share with each other our experiences, struggles and triumphs in this life of discipleship. This it the stuff of our faith, in Lent a time of repentance, desert, fasting, and self-denial we find the power of the Gospel.

Reflection on Midwinter Covenant Ministers Conference 2009

It has been two years since I last made it to the Covenant Minsters conference Midwinter. The conference was out at the Hyatte O'hare where it has been held for many years until recently. For any unfamiliar with Midwinter, the conference is a denomination wide gathering of Covenant ministers and church staff: pastors, youth ministers, missionaries etc. We gather for a time to worship have continuing education opportunities in the form of workshops, reconnecting, networking and meeting with conference Superintendents.

The conference began with a worship service on Monday evening that I was unable to attend because I was attending an editorial meeting of the Goth Magazine Kilter for which I am submitting an article for the spring issue on Goth Eucharists. The mornings started with a Bible Study with one of the New Testament professors from North Park Theological Seminary Kline Snodgrass, which I did not attend because they were at 8:30 and I did not feel up to getting up early enough to get out to Rosemont by 8:30 each morning. I however, was looking forward to the workshops I had chosen to take and was looking forward to hearing Phyllis Tickle speak at the Tuesday evening worship service.

Tuesday was a sort of surreal day, for a variety of reasons. On one hand I ended up seeing people upon arriving at the Hyatt before my morning workshop who I had not seen in several years. Also, being in one place with alot of pastors is just something I get use to, maybe some day but I find it a little odd even if good. The the two workshops I had were Global Slavery: presented by Dr. Boaz Johnson from North Park University, and then Bridging the communications Gap by Steve Luce Heidi Grieppe and Don Meyer of the department of communications of the covenant. From an evil in the world in part fueled by poverty and deep levels of inequality to talk about internet and electronic forms of communication that requires a certain amount of wealth to have access to this technology. Both were excellent workshops and were relavant to concerns and situations of our congregation. This blog post is partially coming out of the "Communications Gap" workshop as I felt encouraged to post to our blog something more than just sermons and the Reconciler update. Dr. Johnson not only brought awareness to the issue of slavery in our contemporary world but gave me somethings to think about in terms of how Christians might approach issues of injustice in the world, and how to engage a suffering world in ways that face the reality's and are ready for action but also can move beyond paralysis to constructive engagement through what Dr. Johnson called "virtue ethics." Tuesday evening Phyllis Tickle outlined her sense that we are in the midst of a periodic "emergence" where things get shuffled and the foundations of Christianity are reshuffled and rethought. The last such "emergence" was the Reformation 500 years ago. She spoke of some of the ways Scriptures as the world of God are being reconcieved and retrieved both from Modernism both in its secularist and fundamentalist forms. So the first day of the conference was a full day with much I will be reflecting on for sometime.
Wednesday I had one full day workshop, and then Wednesday evening was free time no planed worship or event. The workshop I attended was Spiritual Direction and Pastoral ministry. This workshop was a time to reflect with the presenters some of the main qualities of Spiritual Direction and how they relate and also are indicative of pastoral ministry. We explored together the ways in which spiritual direction overlapped, informed and differed from pastoral ministry. I met a few other pastors who in addition to being pastors also have a spiritual direction ministry. This was a very helpful workshop to clarify my own ministry as spiritual director pastor and prior, and the workshop leaders encouraged seeing more connections and overlap than discontinuity and difference between pastoral ministry and spiritual direction. At lunch on Wednesday I met with a friend and Covenant pastor with whom I have a very long familial connection both our Grandparents were German missionaries sent out by the same mission organization, my Grandparrents in China and his in Japan. After the war both his family and mine were refuges and found their way to the states and when both families came to the states ended up living on the same farm owned by an American sister mission organization who took both families in. Yet beyond our familial connection we have found our own friendship that only solidified as we have entered pastoral ministry and meet up each Midwinter we both are there. Our midwinter conversations over lunch or supper are one of the main things I look forward to in coming to the conference.

Thursday was another all day workshop: Evangelism in the Smaller Church. I will admit that I chose this workshop with some skepticism. I was intrigued by the targeting a workshop on evangelism for small churches and none of the other workshops offered interested me. I was actually pleasantly surprised. The presenter was definitely from a much more conservative and Evangelical place than I am and he was pretty confident in his use of the categories of "saved" and "unsaved", so I felt like a solid universalist by comparison. However, he was aware of the Covenant's theological diversity and was sensitive to the potential differences between he and his audience. Also, basically his sense of evangelism was telling the story and ones own story of Christian faith. I had to do much translating into my own theological stance and language but I was pleasantly surprised very little of substance that I took issue with and I think I might have learned the most from this workshop of the four I attended.

The conference is closed with a breakfast and a final speaker. I sat at a table with my friend Jonathan Wilson, and a number of people I had never met before so had a few tell me about your self exchanges that took most of the breakfast. The speaker was Gary Haugen president and founder of International Justice Mission (IJM). This organization works on fighting slavery and other forms of oppression through providing legal council as well as doing investigative work to provide evidence to aid local law enforcement to enforce laws against slavery etc. and thus involved in rescuing slaves and other oppressed people. The organization also helps support those brought out of slavery or other oppression to get back on their feet and re-enter society being able to support themselves. His message was one of encouraging us as pastors and our churches to become involved in the fullness of witnessing to the Gospel and the Kingdom of God through advocacy and working actively against injustice (specifically slavery). But he also admitted that this can be overwhelming and he used the story of the feeding of the five thousand to remind us that one God just asks that we bring what we have and that God will take care of the miracle. The solution to our paralysis in the face of great evil and injustice is to remember that we are simply called to bring what we have to these situations and God multiplies what we have and works through our small, seemingly insignificant offerings.

It was a good week, book ended by issues of injutice in our world specifically slavery. I was encouraged in my ministry as a pastor and specifically with this congregation and our ecumenical vision and character. In the coming months I hope to share with you all a bit more of some things I learned or became aware of again. I think this time at Midwinter should be able enrich our life together as a congregation. This I think is largely the point of this conference to encourage pastors and provide a place to connect and have friendships with pastors from across the country and to provide pastors with resources to bring back to their congregations for the continued growth of all in the spiritual life.