The Courage Workshop

I encourage you with all my heart to attend this workshop. I believe it will change your life!

As a spiritual practice, pause, close your eyes and visualize intently those people who are most important to you; your children, siblings and friends. Many of these valued people perhaps also have rich spirituality within their own lives. Imagine you opening the door that allows you to share together with one another in deeper ways, to experience faith together in making a difference in the lives of others. For many, the hurdle has been our “in the box” thinking that what we are doing as church is the only way it can be done. This workshop will be an adventure in creating, discovering, inventing new ways of being the church in the common everyday activities you and those close to you are familiar and comfortable with locally and in the time and place that fits the availability of your lives. So envision you and these friends at Tim Horton’s or the Good Life gym or hiking or playing euchre and within that fun and comfortable setting you share “moments of meaning” together that opens a whole new "you and them experience" of being together. OK, now you can open your eyes.

This can happen, it does happen. The Courage workshop has a leadership team that will guide us through changing our paradigm of church to connect comfortably with those on the outside looking in with pre-conceptions, suspicion, distrust, hurt, busy lives…. And now we have a way and means, learned tools and resources to blend our lives together in new ways. Sure there is still an element of courage needed for 10 seconds to open the door, but the view through the open door is so natural and familiar that the words you will learn to introduce friends will be comfortable.

D&C 163:3 urges us to be “culturally incarnate”. Jesus was the incarnation of God which means “God being with us” where we are in our lives. We are replicating that same notion in the places and life of people. Following the model of Jesus who did not invite folks to the synagogue but to a hillside or lakeside or home or anywhere at all, we need to be “with people” offering today’s parable like stories, videos, questions that relate to the heart of life. These relationships must be mutually authentic but the beauty of a new creation is we, “you and them” creating the model together. You choose the way you make a difference in the lives of others together, you are the church in a new way. You are not alone. There will be many other groups, like yours, that cluster together in the places of your choosing, perhaps even within C of C churches, as often as works, to share ideas, successes, needs and celebrate through music and other expressions of your own creation. We will experience God in us and in each other. These will become expressions of Community of Christ in a new look, feel and richness.

The Courage Workshop brings you and each participant into focus to touch specifically the people in your circle of life. Your life will be blessed as never envisioned before. Your confidence and competence to be a living culturally incarnate disciple will become a comfortable and life changing expression of what you always wanted it to be. You will become surrounded with those who matter most to you in the life adventure that matters most to you. Through engaging in Mission to pursue peace, abolish poverty and end suffering with those who mean the most to you; joy, hope, love and peace will fill your soul and sacred communities of Spirit empowered friends of faith will celebrate one with another.

Come to the Courage Workshop. Decide right now to set Jan 23-25th aside as the wknd that will change your life. Bring those who with you will be your fellow disciples to affirm, encourage and create together. Orangeville is 20 min north of Brampton. The Retreat Centre is where we held the New Hymnal Retreat last March. It is a wonderful facility with classrooms, fireside lounge, chapel, recreation area, shared rooms, dorms, clean washrooms and a dining hall all contained in one building in a beautiful retreat setting. The max numbers are about 80, so get your name reserved now. Cost is $140 + HST = $158 for the wknd.

Contact me with questions, or ideas of music, resources etc you can think of.  

This is a time of creativity, incarnation and joyful celebration ! Be Courageous !  

submitted by Kerry Richards  416-917-9377   kerry@communityofchrist.ca

Yearning to Be

Longing, yearning, searching, hungering, craving, thirsting, wanting, seeking, desiring, needing, wishing, dreaming for, hoping for, praying for…..

There is a deep unsatisfied heart and soul reaching out that in the quiet moments of stillness, fills our beings with emptiness, despair and lack of identity…..or if one has alignment with the source of creation, our God…. We experience joy, hope, love and peace in that moment. I know from being there, that many fear the stillness, avoid the quiet, need the mind to be occupied with continuous busyness, for to allow the silence to penetrate their self-imposed barriers guarding the essence of life, it is a traumatic encounter.

The psalmist captures so well the searching, the journeying, the finding of oneself in the essence of creation, in the enveloping grace of finding and being me. To sense, I am OK, for eternity unconditionally blesses my life in spite of….who I have been. In that pause of ultimacy, there is peace that nourishes my soul not as the world giveth but as a forgiving healing balm. There is hope that illuminates my mind and dashes away the clouds of despair. There is joy that finally I have purpose, freedom and a knowing that fills each breath I breathe. There is love that bursts from my being as I recognize the gift of others in my life to share the reality of life lived beyond me, to collectively fulfill our Mission of the envisioned peaceable kingdom.

I am found! My thirsting is quenched, my yearning is fulfilled, my searching has found a path, my hunger is met, my prayers are answered, my emptiness is filled. I proclaim Jesus Christ! My God has renewed me, opened my soul and given me fresh vision of that which clarifies what matters most. 

How blessed to be, how blessed to be a blessing, how blessed to be in sacred community with Community of Christ.

submitted By Kerry Richards

Blessed to be the Means of Grace

Spiritual Practice: Healing for Broken Spirits “Begin with quiet prayer. Ask God to help you discern some “sore places” in the body of Christ and in God’s creation. Become aware of people who feel separated, wounded, or left out. Reflect on or write a short journal entry of healing words to at least one person who comes to mind. Ask God for words that will touch this person’s broken spirit like healing ointment. Keep this person in your heart and prayers today and act on any ideas that come to bring blessing and wholeness.”

This is one of the many Daily Bread “moments of presence” with God that has touched me with a depth of feeling for so many people that are hurting in so many ways.  I keep a copy of this specific practice on my wall before me as it captures the reality of so many lives that to pray this just once is so inadequate. This exercise has become deeply personal in a heartfelt way when I pray and centre my projected outpouring of care, hope and love upon another. The compassion of Christ is to all, for all and with all. Through empathetic grace of knowing our hearts God implores us to love even our enemies, an expression of love that knows no boundaries; where one of our new hymns envisions both the abused and the abuser encompassed by love.

Broken spirits can be missed by us in the rush of life. I believe through such "moments of presence" and reflection we come to discern through eyes beyond our humanity, the loneliness, the woundedness and the despair that haunts another. This is the beginning place of healing, reconciliation and peace not as the world giveth. There is a realm of living that is illusive; that awaits us to open our hearts to participate in. It is as subtle as a breeze or the fragrance of a flower, but invites us to enter into relationship with our creator who works through us to bring healing and meaning where life’s agonies are suffocating. I pray both for pause in our lives to “come to ourselves” as the prodigal and “become” blessed and a blessing and for those to whom our words and our care might soothe. Ask God and your eyes will be opened to new world.

Submitted by Kerry Richards

Healing - God grant me the Courage to risk.....

Community of Christ has deeply emphasized spiritual practices as foundational formation disciplines that nurture discernment and mindfulness with a relational God we encounter in real time, not as a fictional feel good imagining. We experience a caring, compassionate and unconditional loving God who “Is.” 

Over the past 3 months I have taken an interest in the nature and reality of the ministry of healing, yes, through the Spirit of God. I have read numerous books. I have read about and attended a healing retreat and spoken with practitioners of alternative energy healing. I have also read of the contradictory scientific neurological descriptions of near death and religious experiences. Further I have discussed the pantheistic oneness of the interconnected spirit which permeates all creation and how this relates to healing. I have read about and had conversations about the possibility of Divine intervention and of the diverse perspectives within Community of Christ and elsewhere. I have reviewed the dozens of healings that comprise Jesus’ ministry and in every single case the compassionate Jesus heals the person before him who approaches him in faith or …..  uncertainty.  This is a subject of great complexity at the discussion level. What happens if we take it beyond conversation?

Healing in all its forms is prevalent throughout the ministry of the “human” Jesus (Phil 2:7 ) with the promise that is extended to his Disciples of the same ministry. The modernistic worldview is that God does not intervene, that the "rain falls on all alike” nature of God’s unconditional, pervasive love leaves healing in the realm of human intellect and skill. There is no subjective miracle for one person over another. Is this what we believe despite our proclamation of Christ? I pose this question to each one. Are scriptures a faith story, parable type representation of good living human expressions of “best practices”? Or…. is there an endowing, empowering, healing spirit of God that intervenes in the circumstances of human life? Is this merely a topic for conversation or a moment for truth learned and evidenced through personal experimentation? Is there a difference between the revealed insights of discernment through dwelling in the word or centering….. and the spiritual practice of healing? Is our encounter with our relational God only internal inspirational mindfulness limited to rational human experience? 

My ministry includes the laying on of hands. I pray petitionary prayers to our loving relational Creator whose compassion is boundless and dwarfs my inadequate words on behalf of another. Is my ministry to bring sympathetic comfort and peace….. or granted power to enable the compassion of God to bring wholeness of body, mind and spirit to the person in need? Are interpretations of what wholeness means necessary if a tumour is not made benign or hearing is not restored or pain does not stop? Are we expecting to provide crutches instead of healing? Are we reticent to actually say the words, “be healed by the power of God” Are we offering petitionary prayers when prayers of expectant power to heal are God’s intention? I don’t think healing can be a detached conversation apart from vulnerability to be and know. I believe to understand healing I must experience it through personal trials where I put my life and ministry on the line and risk with compassion on behalf of those in need of God’s blessing. These are my questions and my personal journey going forward? Expect this of me and ask me how my ministry is unfolding as I open myself to new expressions of what Christ's mission means. Do you have the courage to join me? 

Submitted by Kerry Richards

Spirituality Needs Mission

In my new role of Director of Mission for Canada my focus is upon 2 primary areas of activity. The first is creating New Invitational Expressions of Community of Christ and the second is Congregational Revitalization. Following 2 reunions, a meditation retreat and reading numerous books and online sites about Millennials, church growth, spirituality and religion; here are some thoughts I would like to bring forward.

The disillusionment of church is the platitudes that seem hypocritical when not lived out, the promises that are not realized, the vision that ever so slowly inches forth in the outside view of the church.

I have had many, many meaningful conversations of late with good people peripheral to the church, several who were quite active at one point in their lives. I have personally been there. A common description of their new spirituality is the freedom they feel in their spirituality that is not confined by institutionalism. We can all understand institutional disenchantment. We encounter institutions every day. They can be slow, plodding, policy based. They frustrate our freedoms by asking us to work within frameworks and to abide by the will of others.

Media reports and stats reveal that the dropout rate from traditional church has accelerated by more than 15% per yr in the last 5 years. Overall, people state they are spiritual but not religious. It seems to be an emerging identity trend that many actually aspire to and proudly declare their individualism and departure from tradition. Religion and churches within the Christian realm have become part of a….. us/them culture, with churches becoming rarely revered institutions regardless of denominational differentiation or their attempts to change.

Some say Spirituality is only an emotion; abstract intuitions of something greater. I would say Spirituality is a relationship. Some say that Religion is an obligation; that Spirituality has no ties; that Religion has baggage from earlier eras to contend with, even if the church is re-forming its identity today, Spirituality has few apologetics to explain. For some the experience of Spirituality is satisfied with itself; Religion expresses dissatisfaction with the world which would seem to be a commonality with spirituality yet the corporate dimension is a barrier as well as the perceived lack of action. Spirituality as an end in itself is allergic to institutionalism. Institutions typically are perhaps the only mechanism human beings have to perpetuate ideologies and actions. If say, books were enough, why would we have universities? If a hermitage was sufficient, why have communities? If a single voice were enough why have unions? I suggest if you want to do something lasting in this world, encompassing all humanity, including your children’s children, then look again at church. You can be a catalyst of change. It has the vision and potential to tie a community together and lead meaningful change in concert with the Divine.….it can mobilize. There are positive characteristics and qualities within the framework of a church; our church...... if you look and engage.

To be spiritual but not religious suggests freedom but confines your devotional life to feeling good and looking in a mirror. If we have learned one thing about human nature however, it is that people’s internal sense of goodness does not always match their behavior, whichever mindset they are. The two dimensions are not mutually exclusive. To know whether your actions are good, a window is a more effective tool than a mirror. Be part of a community. There is something profoundly, well, spiritual about group dynamics, about dialogical interaction coupled with spiritual mindfulness. It involves individuals trying together to sort out priorities, to listen and learn from one another, to make a difference.

Often when people say, “I stay away from the church — too much politics,” what they mean is that they did not get their way. Institutions enable but they also frustrate, as do families and every other organized sector of human life. If you want frictionless, one would have to do that alone. Participating in church does not mean you have to agree with all the positions of your own group, but, engagement in Mission together is the glue that enables unity within that community.

No one expects those without faith to obligate themselves to a religious community. But for one who has an intuition of something greater than themselves, to hold that this spiritual sense is purely personal truth, that it demands no communal searching and struggle, no organization to realize its potential in this world, I hope Community of Christ can change that perspective and offer a Mission of Meaning. Join in; together is harder, but together is better.

submitted by Kerry Richards

Butterfly (reprise)

The following post first appeared in What's the Good Word in April of 2011.  Much has changed for our lovely butterfly over the intervening three years, and change will continue to occur.  What has not changed is our delight in this little congregation's colourful contribution to our collective life.  We continue to smile on days when the butterfly soars in the warmth of holy sunshine and watch carefully on days when it needs to seek shelter from the rain. As a way to look back and remember the delightful flight of this little entity, I offer the following reprint of that early post.

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Consider the caterpillar; how he crawls along quietly going from leaf to leaf, staying mostly hidden, trying to blend in with his surroundings.  He wouldn’t dare stand out.  After all, he might get stepped on or eaten for some bird’s lunch!  So he quietly crawls along until it is time, then spins a cocoon with himself inside.  To all appearances, that is the end.  The caterpillar is no more.  The blend-in caterpillar, that perhaps no one knew even existed, has ceased to be.

But then something remarkable happens.  Transformation occurs!  The cocoon splits and a new creature emerges.  This new being does not immediately take to the air, but spends some time to get oriented and dry its wings in the sun.  Only then does it begin to float on the breeze and fly where it wills.  Gone are the drab, blend-in colours, replaced by bright and wondrous hues.  The urge to hide is replaced by a willingness to see and be seen as it visits the flowers and makes the world a better, more beautiful place.

In the Barrie congregation, we are beginning to see signs of a butterfly.  Our former presence there had reached the stage of its life when it needed its rest.  To outside appearances, the caterpillar was dead, but this was not the case.  From the cocoon has emerged a new creature and a fresh expression of Christian life is beginning to test its wings in that fair city. 

This past weekend, for instance, there was a gathering of youth and others on Thursday evening for fun and fellowship.  Friday saw our leaders out on the streets, visiting the unique flowers that are God’s people.  Saturday evening was their first worship event held in a downtown café, and the little coffee shop was packed with 31 people!  Then Sunday afternoon, despite some rain, a group gathered for a service project which consisted of picking up trash at a local park.  I have seen pictures of that event, and they were clearly having a wonderful time.  They didn’t even look like caterpillars!  Then they all went back to the pastor’s home for more conversation and play.

I think this butterfly is going to be absolutely beautiful!

Posted by Carman

D-Day

Seventy years ago today my father was camped in a forest in England with his army outfit trying to put their gear back together.  A few days before they had been ordered to the docks for the D-Day invasion.  Their trucks had been waterproofed (I’m not sure how they did that) and everything was ready when a buzz-bomb hit them and “blew everything to smithereens!” (A direct quote from my dad I have never forgotten.)  The irony is not lost on me that that bomb may, in fact, have saved his life.

There are a few old soldiers, sailors and flyers left who were there; all old now but probably little more than teenage boys at the time.  There are still more who remember reading or listening to the news, wondering, worrying, praying for brothers, friends, sweethearts.  I am none of those.  I was not yet born, and had it not been for that buzz bomb, perhaps might never have been.  Yet, despite the fact that I was not there, it seems to me something should be said today, something reported or recorded in What’s the Good Word.  Some recognition should be given to those who fought and those who died so we and others might live.

When I was a child visiting my grandparents in Wiarton, my grandmother would often stop at a little house down the street and visit with Mrs. Meredith.  Mrs. Meredith lived alone in a tiny house on the edge of a hill on Gould Street.  There are only two things more I remember about Mrs. Meredith: she was not very tall, and her only son, her only child, went off to fight in the war and was killed.  Its not much for me to remember, but the memory must have been almost more than she could carry.

I was born a mere three years after WWII ended.  I remember people talking about things “during the war”, and to a child it seemed like it must have been something that happened a long time ago.  It wasn’t.  It isn’t.  And what is worse, for many people today war still rages.  While I sit in relative peace and try to coax these few inelegant words out through my fingertips, in many places fighting continues.  Will it ever end?  Will it never end?

So today, lets think about those teenagers who might have been our uncles, friends and neighbours.  Lets think too about those for whom war still rages…and let us pray for peace and justice for all.

Posted by Carman

6-6-14

In memory of 6-6-44.