That’s what I’ve been feeling a lot of lately; that and some numbness and weakness. In October I went to the doctor and x-rays determined that I have arthritis in my neck, as well as my toes. O the joys of getting older! By the end of November the symptoms had progressed enough to get me back in the doctors office and this time it was an MRI that indicated my spinal cord is being obstructed and I have to have surgery. The technical name is anterior cervical distectomy with fusion. By the time this Crossings is published I will have already had the surgery (December 10).. I will be out of the pulpit for about a month. Doctors are very noncommittal about recovery; on-line I think it says 6-8 weeks. Of course I will do all I can to recover as soon as possible.

In my absence the SPRC Committee is in charge of both filling the pulpit and coordinating any response to our needs. Derek Wood is the chair of the SPR Committee and is the first person to contact.

I have two requests of everyone: The first is the obvious one – I ask for your prayers, for me and for my family. The second is that you all remain present, active and faithful while I am recuperating. Be even more vigilant in being the Church. Reach out to each other and care for each other. If there is a niche to fill, jump in and feel God’s blessings. I thank you all for being such a wonderful church. See you one of these Sundays. Pastor Jim

Over the last decade, I have enjoyed learning about soccer.  When I was young there really weren’t opportunities to play soccer – I wish there had been.  However, it is the one sport Kenneth loves and so I have been to a lot of soccer games.  Now corner kicks and off sides are second nature to me, but when Kenneth was first playing I had a lot of questions.  Why are there yellow and red “cards”?  And what’s with the clock and ‘extra time’?  I noticed at high school soccer games the clock winds down and there can be as many substitutions as needed.  Is this “Americanized soccer”?  Before I get into what I really want to say, my analysis of soccer, is that too much depends on the blindness and whims of the referee.  The whole concept of ‘diving’ (faking being fouled so one can get a free or penalty kick) is ludicrous.  Personally, I think soccer needs instant replay.  I still feel sorry for Ghana in the last World Cup when a player from Uruguay slapped the ball with his hands out of the goal after the ball had clearly passed the plane of the goal – it was a goal!  Not only that, but the player from Uruguay committed the gravest of sins, he touched the ball with his hands… both of them… intentionally!  What’s a red card for?!  All Ghana got was a penalty kick that was missed and they lost.  (According to Kenneth the Uruguayan player plays for Liverpool and is now famous for biting the ear of an opponent!).  The point is, after my rant, when one is new to something one can offer questions and perspective that can be useful.

And so it is with people who are new to the church… not only new to OUR Church but new to THE church.  People who have been a part of the church all of their lives and have been active in many churches have a lot of experience and we need to listen to their suggestions.  But I’m not thinking primarily of them, here;  they are more like people who played soccer in another league.  I’m talking about the unchurched.  There was a time when we could assume that most people knew what church is about.  But these days, especially in our region of the country, we can make no such an assumption.  There are people around us who do not know what communion is, or stewardship, or why we have flowers on the alter. (Why DO we have flowers on the alter?)  It can be challenging to receive questions that seem so basic but force us to reconsider why we do what we do.  For one semester during seminary, our worship professor assigned that we go to a different church each Sunday from a different tradition.  I learned a lot and I had a lot of questions!  He also asked us to try to step out of ourselves to imagine going to worship without knowing even the basics of tradition and liturgy.  What would that feel like?  What questions would we have?  Why do we have vestments?  (Remember yellow and red cards?)  I remember one Sunday recently someone asked me why I was wearing a black robe instead of a white one?  The answer was pretty simple, because I felt like it… but imagine what an unchurched person might think if he/she comes for three weeks and I’m wearing my white robe and suddenly it’s black?  Who died?  Then the danger is, when we change vestments for Advent, for example, this same unchurched person could accost me after church and wonder if I’m feeling a little blue?

One thing the demographics tell us about our “neighborhood” is that there are a lot of unchurched people living here.  Many who feel that they are spiritual, but don’t go to church.  We usually assume that they don’t go to church because they have made a researched and reasonable decision not to.  Far from it!  In many cases they haven’t a clue about what we do in worship and they are scared!  There are two things we need to do about this:  The first is to let people know more about who we are… I’m sure that one of our “modules” for Beta-Vitality will be marketing.  The other is this one – we need to imagine coming to church knowing nothing.  In essence, putting our feet in their shoes.  Considering everything to be strange, imagining how it must feel to not understand what is going on and even more, not to know a soul.  This is what radical hospitality is about.  It isn’t just being open, inclusive and accepting… it is being intentional and assertive – purposefully being prepared for the stranger who doesn’t know what a hymnal is, or what we mean when we say they are invited to coffee hour.

See you in worship.  Pastor Jim

This past Sunday we had the pleasure of meeting our coach, Reverend John Haller who will be leading us through the Beta-Vitality process for the next two years. Reverend Haller is a retired pastor from the Texas Southwest Annual Conference, significantly a graduate of the University of Texas. He and his spouse moved to Bellingham for her health reasons and they attend Garden Street UMC in Bellingham. We are blessed to have him working with us.

During the meeting after the second service, Reverend Haller led us in a process of discovering what we see as our strengths and assets. (Despite an attempt to distinguish strengths and assets it got a little muddled. Christy Herman, who is an accountant told me one way to think of assets is as a balance sheet – what we have that helps us accomplish our mission.) The task force is taking in all the sheets of paper that were filled out and putting them on an Excel spreadsheet – we will eventually be sharing them with everyone.

This information is only one part of what we have been asked to collect for the beginning assessment in t his process. On August 25 many of you took the survey – we are waiting for the results of that too – we must make assessments of our building, finances, provide 20 years of statistics and review the demographics of our area. From all of this information we will garner a better sense of who we are and what our potential is. On September 29 the task force will meet with Reverend Haller and undertake discussion of our first “module” (read, area of ministry). This first module will be chosen by Gail Grossman and Curtis Brown who are administering the project, based upon the information we provide them. After that we choose the modules.

That’s where we stand with Beta-vitality. It is our hope to keep everyone informed all through the process. If you have any questions please feel free to ask a member of the task force: Pastor Jim, Ellen Morehouse, Taryn Oestreich, Mark Glover, Mark Wilder, Miriam Molver, Janet Church and Jocelyn Matheny.

We took an initial step in the Beta-Vitality Project on Sunday, August 25 when we took a survey that will be processed by a company called Natural Church Development. Thank you all who took the time to ex the boxes. The next step is to meet our coach.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about please read the article in the Pastor’s Blog.

Our coach is Reverend John Haller, a retired United Methodist pastor from the Southwest Texas Annual Conference who lives in Bellingham. Aside from his Texas twang and having way too much hair, I deem him to be, after an initial meeting, an amiable person and I’m looking forward to working with him.

So get ready and mark your calendars, Sunday, September 8 after the second service. Reverend Haller will be spending two hours with us to learn about our Church. We would like for as many people as possible to join us – to be involved. We do not want this process to simply be about the committee.

Since Reverend Haller will be leading this time I do not know what he will ask, but I suspect it will involve similar questions to those posed on the survey. How well do we see ourselves doing regarding particular aspects of ministry – worship, evangelism, small groups, organization and structure? There will also be questions about our feelings and commitments to our Church. It could be a very exciting and enriching discussion – and everyone is invited.

A light lunch will be provided as will childcare. Pastor Jim

Why did Raskolnikov kill? That is the question that haunts Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel, Crime and Punishment. There is not single answer but the author gives a number of hints: Raskolnikov was bullied, his father was absent and his mother possessive, and the larger problem of atheism that the Enlightenment brought to Russia. (Dostoyevsky is famous for saying, “Without God all is permitted.) The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams in a book that includes a review of Crime and Punishment says the Raskolnikov’s crime was a pathological expression of himself in the face of a morally deteriorating culture and his own radical isolation. Does this sound familiar?

Why did Adam Lanza kill? This haunts us all today, and likely it will for a long time to come. Here too there is no single answer. I recently had a discussion with my college son about causation and correlation, he speaking from a scientific perspective and me being the philosopher, and we came to a similar conclusion. To think in terms of causation encourages us to look for a single cause for an event. Correlation sees numerous, sometimes uncountable and unaccountable things that correlate to create an event. When my stomach hurts do I look for the single reasons for it – a bug or something I ate – or do I included many factors including my emotions and the millions of microbes that live in my digestive system? We still tend to think in a causal fashion when we need to consider correlation.

Why did Adam Lanza kill? there are many factors involved including the proliferation of guns and slack gun laws, mental illness, the common experience of boys in our culture, his personal relationships with his parents, and certainly his experience at school. There is not single reason, but many things correlate with this tragic event. I think this event could be an opportunity for us to ask larger questions – interrelated questions about all of these correlations and how they function in our culture. Crime and Punishment is a story of the Russian people; how does this fit into the story of us as a people?

I have no doubt that Adam Lanza felt isolated and alone. Yes, he was mentally ill, but to say just that is to dismiss how we are all a part of a culture isolates people, particularly young men. It is likewise too simple to say that if we only changed the gun laws these things wouldn’t happen. I believe that they wouldn’t happen as often and I am in favor of more stringent laws, but to me the more poignant quesion is, why do we love guns so much? What is it in our values and psychology that nurtures this passion? Likewise, I am all for considering how we do not adequately care for the mentally ill in our society, and I would favor much more government funding for this, but I am also interested in what it is that we value and want that encourages mental illness and at the same time prevents us from taking care of it? I believe that it is not that there are a few sick people in our society and the rest of us are fine. I believe it is the tip of an iceberg of a deeper spiritual illness that inhabits each of us and pervades our society.

Like the fictional Raskolnikov, I think Adam Lanza’s act was a radical and pathological expression of himself, in a culture that values the self above all things. As much as we claim to be a religious people, I often feel that we are functional atheists. Our obsession with self reliance, self-help, self improvment, personal freedom, privacy, nice abs, personal sexual exploits and Hummers, just to name a few are also correlative to these violent and tragic events. In any case, and regardless of whether you agree, this is where our discussion needs to go; particularly in the church we need to aks the values and spiritual questions.

A universal theme in all of Dosteyevsky’s work is the spiritual power and grace of being responsible for others, not just ourselves. Redemption for Raskolnikov comes via the commitment of Sofia even following him to the labor camp. And, ironically, it is when he is imprisoned and accepts Sofia’s dedication to him that he becomes free.

Finally, and parenthetically, we lose so much in our culture when we lose literation – which comprises the wisdom of the past. We think we are dealing with this question for the first time, but we aren’t. This loss is also correlative to the violence in our world. I would love to see Crime and Punishment become a part of the required curriculum in high school, and can’t help but wonder that something might be different if Adam Lanza had read it. Pastor Jim