Notes from Vestry May 21, 2013

• We welcomed our new administrative assistant, Sherry Poulos.
• Janitorial: we chose Clarence's company to clean the church. Their offer fit well into our budget, and they will clean three times a week.
• Admin Assistant: Thanks to Gordon Weighell for all of his work on this. We interviewed several people and have hired Sherry Poulos and very please that she has joined us.
• Alpha: no new news
• Fire Alarm: Information was combined with engineering.
• Pay Pal: we are working on putting an electronic system of giving for the web site. Chris is heading this up. He will be in touch with the Envelope Secretary.
• Vacation Bible School: we have decided not to have one this year either like last year or using the Crosstalk team. We are still in conversation with Fusion about a possible summer program.
• Revenue Opportunity: there is a music teacher who has expressed using the church as a base for teaching piano. He is willing to pay $800 a month for 10 months. The corporation is looking at exploring this more fully.
• Assistant: Chris is going on Marriage Encounter this weekend. He has been busy with Soup'd Up and the Facebook workshop. He is looking at working with the youth group in the fall.
• Financial. We have finished the first third of the year in a good position. We have a $9,606 surplus. But that is with the surplus from last year being rolled forward; without the surplus we would have a small surplus of $674 which puts us in a good position for the more difficult third of the year financially.
• Stewardship: Gordon Voth presented on our plans for the fall. They will be tied in with the Mission Fest and Back to Church Sunday.
• Executive Council: will meet on Thursday
• Youth: We are sorry to see Devon going but wish her well. She is going to the University of Victoria.
• Engineering: The fire alarms are in and functioning. The county was happy with all of the work that we have done. We may not have to put in fire doors as we thought. This will save us a lot of money.
• Maintainance: William is going on vacation for six weeks; he is passing the baton onto Jim Reville in the meantime.

Spirituality for Millennials

One of the big questions in church circles is what does it engage the next generation. The name given to the current 'next' generation is the Milennials and they have specific, interesting demographic trends. Here is an interesting article on the spirituality of millennials: (the original site is: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/05/14/ministry-among-millenials-the-spirituality-of-young-people/)

Note: While religious affiliation amongst young adults is down, it is intriguing to find that studies show significant numbers of unaffiliated young adults pray daily and meditate weekly. This article addresses this opportunity.

Many young adults are investigating themes in spirituality more willingly than formal religion. Across religious traditions absentee young adults are no longer an exception, instead they have become the norm. This drift could exist because young adults express disappointment regarding relationships with families and institutions. More than ever, young adults are alive to the inconsistencies that exist in what they are told to do and what they are shown to do by example. Furthermore, with millennials, dissociative behaviors are customary. This new way of being could have several influences: parenting styles, non-traditional familial structures, technology, social pressures, and/or mental health issues.

Additionally, post-modern, global situations have millennials searching for deeper meaning, beliefs, values, and relationships that can offer greater support for self-integration in this convoluted world. Young adults do not only want to cope with the realities of post modernity, but seek opportunities to thrive in it.

Contemplative spirituality enhances the spiritual lives of young adults. Practices in the contemplative tradition offer young adults a path toward prayer, depth, and awareness of the presence of God. When young adults regularly engage practices within the contemplative tradition they can:

1. Discover and understand their distinct relationship with the divine.
2. Draw out and build up their overlooked innate strengths and spiritual resources.
3. Notice what encumbers and sustains their awareness and reaction to the divine.
4. Cultivate their spiritual lives through practices, worship, and/or education.
5. Interpret or simply be present to their lived experiences of the divine.
6. Be a witness to the transformation of their perceptions, responsiveness, and overall ways of being in the world.

The theological concept of Koinonia, spiritual companionship, is a guiding principle that weaves throughout the contemplative tradition. Groups are an ideal vehicle for spiritual growth in the lives of young adults. Groups, large and small, are a significant part of spiritual formation, facilitation, and direction. When we are in communion, we are better able to engender hope, express universality, encourage altruism, and develop an ecology for the Spirit.

Since 2009, I (Andrea Noel) have engaged young adults with practices from the contemplative tradition. As a spiritual companion, I pray, listen, encourage, and respond to the presence of God in young adults’ lives. Some practices include: meditation, lectio divina, labyrinths, examen, journaling, chanting, collaging, body prayer, group and individual spiritual guidance, and others.

As the Chaplain at University of Maryland College Park, I (Rev. Gaddis) find myself at the intersection of religion, spirituality, and young adults. One of the ministries of the chaplaincy is a contemplative spiritual practices group. This group bears out many of the assertions above as the majority of students who come are spiritual, but not religious. Through my pastoral presence and facilitation, the community is one of non-religious people encountering the Episcopal Church and its theology. The group is an experience of spiritual direction where being Episcopal or Christian is not necessary. Yet, students are adopting in their own way an Episcopal identity.

As we close the second semester, I (Gaddis) regularly see 7-10 students attending, and an additional 10 students who are part of the community irregularly. Each week we see newcomers who have been expressly invited by other attendees. The students are beginning to have spiritual experiences that are opening them to a coherent, real-time relationship with God. Conversations about one’s relationship with God are happening with several students who simply would not have been willing to two months ago. The students have even asked me to continue the group during the summer. This desire is an unprecedented request.

This is the effect of creating environments where people can have and process spiritual experiences. For those who are spiritual but not religious, this is exactly what they are looking for: something real. Because these practices are drawn from our Christian contemplative tradition, what is happening here is a repeatable authentic expression of the Episcopal Church.

Our hope is that exposing young adults to these practices invites them to a deeper encounter of God. We want to empower them with the ability to see their intrinsic value, strength, and connection to God. Contemplative spirituality allows young adults to express their own lived experiences of the divine without judgment or qualification and with genuine freedom. These practices help to cultivate a regular prayer life, encourage self-discovery, and create a knowing self in relation to God.

Andrea Noel completed a Master of Divinity at Howard University, residency at Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats, and is currently enrolled in the Master of Arts in Spiritual and Pastoral Care at Loyola University Maryland. Her life’s work is to help young adults go inward, realizing the deepest purpose within them that the world desperately needs, and reconnecting to the one true source. 

Otis Gaddis III came to the University of Maryland as a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School (2012). He studied young adult ministry, progressive evangelism, and community organizing during his time there. At Maryland, he serves as the Episcopal/Anglican Chaplain.

God's Vision for the World

Here is a nice piece from Brueggemann about God vision for the all of creation:

Living Toward a Vision

by Walter Brueggemann

 

The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature…. Israel has a vision of all people drawn into community around the will of God (Isaiah 2:2-4). In the New Testament, the church has a parallel vision of all persons being drawn under the lordship and fellowship of Jesus (Matthew 28:16-20; John 12:32) and therefore into a single community (Acts 2:1-11). As if those visions were not sweeping enough, the most staggering expression of the vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all God’s creation.

 

That persistent vision of joy, well-being, harmony, and prosperity is not captured in any single word or idea in the Bible, and a cluster of words is required to express its many dimensions and subtle nuances: love, loyalty, truth, grace, salvation, justice, blessing, righteousness. But the term that in recent discussions has been used to summarize that controlling vision is shalom. Both in current discussion and in the Bible itself, it bears tremendous freight—the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery.

 

Reprinted from Peace (Understanding Biblical Themes Series), (Chalice Press, 2001), 13-14.