Leaning in to ministry—spiritual gifts survey

Welcome to May! 

In this season of springtime and renewal and new growth in the natural world, McKnight is also leaning into renewal and new growth.  Some of you were able to join us at our service this past Sunday, and heard Craig speak about the spiritual gifts survey that we’re doing.  Part of following the Spirit’s leading is acknowledging what sort of gifts that we have been given; this is an opportunity for both the individual and the church body.  The more we know about our particular part of the body of Christ, the more we can lean into the gifts that God has already given us as we turn to ministry in our communities.  So . . .

You may or may not already know that our United Methodist General Conference, which meets every four years, has begun on April 23rd and will run through May 3rd.  Many issues are discussed every time Conference meets, and only General Conference can speak for United Methodism as a whole.  Some of the discussions will center on what we call legislation, which if passed will be entered into our next edition of the Book of Discipline, which describes our mission, who we are, and how we work. 

As I write this letter, Church Council has just met, and I have to say that I’m excited about the growing sense of purpose and direction. Council here at McKnight has always, in my experience, been thoughtful and ministry-oriented, but I think we’re asking better questions now, and discerning new and better possibilities. Some of you have had a chance to do a spiritual gifts survey, and we’re hoping that more will be able to participate in the coming weeks—it will be fun to see where we all fall in terms of the survey. I should also say that if you think the survey doesn’t properly account for your gifts and inclinations, you are free to lean into your own sense of who you are. This survey just gives us a sense of what kinds of ministries might interest different people, so that we might invite you to participate in the things you actually enjoy.

In seminary we learned that “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner). While we all might sometimes pitch in in places where we don’t necessarily feel “gifted,” we should consider whether our inclinations are telling us something, particularly about our skills, and especially about God’s calling.

This week’s letter is a couple of quick announcements: 

In light of recent floods, which seriously depleted supplies of flood buckets at our Western Pennsylvania Mission Barn, we are collecting supplies for flood buckets.  Follow this link for specifics:  https://umcmission.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Cleaning-Kit-Assembly-Instructions_September-2023.pdf.  Please note that you can purchase all of the materials or simply a few, and used 5-gallon buckets are accepted; used buckets must be clean and odor-free. 

We are also currently collecting items for the rummage sale at our sister church, Epworth UMC in Allison Park (they are collecting flood bucket supplies for us, too!).  They are accepting most of the usual things, including furniture, but please no electronics and no upholstered furniture. 

Happy Easter!  It was my honor to celebrate this most beautiful of all of our holidays with all of you once again! 

Thank you all for all of your contributions to the M&M’s personal care collection for North Hills Community Outreach, and for all of the food items as well.  This sort of work is so important for the community, and you honor your Christian faith when you participate as you are able. 

 I hope you all enjoyed the Easter bulletin board, full of color and life with all of the Easter eggs hand-painted by the young students at our preschool. 

I can’t believe Lent is nearly over!  I have very much enjoyed our Lenten Soup Suppers, and have heard good reviews overall, so I’m hoping to continue those in the future. 

That said, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it this week.  As many of you know, I had to take a family member with severe stomach pain in to the ER, and we ended the day with an unplanned abdominal surgery.  I am grateful to all of you who prayed, who showed up for the Soup Supper and had prayer and fellowship, and to all of you who offered help as well. 

Last night we had another wonderful Lenten Soup Supper, with Split Pea Soup and Minestrone this time, and with homemade bread and cookies—thank you to all who have contributed on any of the nights, whether through food or labor!  And thank you for your conversation with each other in the small groups:  whether you answer the questions directly or simply speak about an adjacent subject, it’s an exercise in holy community.  We have two more weeks of this time together, and I’m looking forward to spending it with you!

And speaking of community, our preschool is currently working on an Easter bulletin board, so soon we will be able to celebrate those children in our midst.  There’s a fresh energy to children’s art, where you can see them experiencing and experimenting with all their senses—I’m really looking forward to seeing it with you in our front hall. 

As it begins to feel more and more like spring, and we begin more and more to anticipate Easter, I am treasuring this Lenten journey with you.  I appreciate that so many of you are coming to the Lenten Soup Suppers, and that your response has been so warm.  I think community—behaving as a body—is one of McKnight’s strongest gifts, and I am very happy to live into that with you, even as we reflect together each week on themes having to do with Lent. 

While we’re talking about the soup suppers, I want to thank the people who have put extra effort into setting up, making soup, making or bringing bread, and cleaning up afterward.  I’d also like to thank Kay, for leading on the 5th when I was down with this virus, and Craig for leading the service this past Sunday.  To all of you:  your time and energy is much appreciated, and we see your love for your church! 

As I write this, we’ve just had our first Lenten Soup Supper, and it was a success!  This first time I brought two soups, Carla brought homemade bread, and Kay brought a baguette, and some people set up and other people cleaned up.  We ate well and had good fellowship and then a short time of thinking together about Lent and about wilderness—about what wilderness can show us about ourselves and about God.  It was good to be the church together!

We’ll be doing Soup Suppers each Tuesday through Lent, and we’ve already got our next three cooks lined up, so even though it’s a simple dinner of soup and bread, it’s sure to be delicious— we’d love to see you there!

It’s so strange that Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday fall on the same day this year—celebration and mortality, all in the same day.  But I’d like to invite you to consider that it’s not actually a bad combination. 

Part of remembering that we’re mortal is about knowing that we are finite—that we are not God.  And yes, (this) life does have a period at the end.  We are fragile beings, entirely dependent on God and God’s creation.  But there’s something about the awareness of that fragility that invites us into better love:  we only have so much time, so let’s pay attention while we’re here. 

Greetings! 

As we approach Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, I’d like to highlight a few things: 

1.       Our upcoming Soup Suppers, on Tuesday nights at 6:00.  I’ll be doing the meditations each week of Lent, and I’ll bring the first soups and some bread or crackers.  I’ve already got some people lined up for cooking on some of the other days but have a couple days left, so if this is your thing, we’d love to have you sign up for soup!  This will be a simple time of food, meditation or learning, and Christian Fellowship—a good way to observe Lent together. 

A possible personal practice for you:  if you read a chapter of the Gospel of John each day starting after Ash Wednesday, you’ll finish just before Palm Sunday. 

Grace and peace to you on this sunny, warm day!

Believe it or not, Lent is already coming soon, and we are going to try something new this year. We are going to do a Lenten Soup Supper on Tuesday nights at 6:00, starting on February 20th. I’ll lead a short meditation each week and we’ll have a simple dinner, with bread or crackers.

The first night I’ll make a soup, and we’ll have some bread or some crackers alongside, for an easy dinner for everyone. I’m hoping that others will volunteer for some of the other Tuesdays. These evenings will allow us some fellowship and a little extra time to rest and to pay attention to our faith and to our faith community during this season leading up to Easter.

This month is a little bit of a respite, liturgically speaking.  We’re between the major holidays and seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter, which gives us an opportunity to savor our time in Mark’s gospel.  We get to learn about what makes this gospel unique, as each of the gospels has a certain flavor, and we get to revisit once again some of the beloved stories of Jesus. 

I’ve been talking recently about how we are continually learning, continually discipling.  Knowing who Jesus is and what salvation is still leaves plenty of room for growth, and how we spend our time shapes us.  Together or alone, we worship, we pray, we study, we think and meditate.  Both together and alone are important.

I’m writing this on Tuesday, with all of that beautiful snow outside!  I hope you’re able to enjoy it—I always appreciate the extra reflected light. 

I was glad on Sunday that some of you were able to come to worship, and I was glad that some of you took care of yourselves on a cold, snowy day by worshiping from home.  We have the Zoom link, so you can participate either way. 

Given the upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr Day, I have been thinking about love and action, and the church’s place in all of it.  There have been in the past few decades many pressures on the church and on Christians to “contain ourselves,” to limit our faith to personal religion, something abstract and internal.  This approach to Christianity is undeniably socially more comfortable, and allows us to fit in to our larger culture more seamlessly—with very little friction. 

The problem with that mode of living is that it is not a biblical form of faith.  Biblical faith has always included a way of life, and that includes how we live with others.  Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”  Justice and kindness are at the core of who we are called to be, right alongside our relationship with God—maybe even a natural and intrinsic part of our relationship with God.

Happy New Year!

Some of us have already put all of the Christmas decorations away, and some of us are waiting for Epiphany (January 6th), but for all of us the holiday bustle is slowing.  The snow a few days ago was lovely, but has already melted.  I can’t help hoping for more—I love the way it reflects the light and helps winter to be a little brighter. 

Maybe you’re a resolution person and maybe you aren’t—I’m usually not—but I read something the other day that suggested that a yearly goal is too big for most people, that we’re more successful if we set shorter term goals (say, a month) and let one success move us to the next.  Or we might simply be happy that we had that month.  Another piece I read reminded us that maybe some years we could pick a fun goal:  you might, for instance, resolve to eat as many different pasta shapes as possible this year.  Or to try a new cookie recipe once a month until summer. 

However you choose to organize your new year, consider adding a new faith practice, even for the short term. 

Merry Christmas!

We’ve just celebrated Christmas Eve, and paid attention together to the wonder of the Incarnation, in which God chose to embrace the limits of a human body in order to show us how much we are beloved—how much God wants to be with us throughout our lives.  And the celebration was truly beautiful.  I felt lucky to be with you, together in our community, coming before God together and celebrating our faith with our fellow Christians. 

After all of these weeks of waiting, of Advent preparation and feeling the needs and darkness of the world, we are almost there!  The long-anticipated nativity is just around the corner. 

Many thanks to Kathy Smith, who collected photos and stories about the different nativities used as part of the Christmas preparations and celebrations within our church community.  The stories and images were posted on Facebook, giving us a sense of each other’s journeys and stories.  If you haven’t yet had a chance to see them, please find your way to the church Facebook page and scroll through the different ones—they are a loving window into our church members’ faith as shown in our own homes. 

In this midst of Advent, as we are learning again to listen and anticipate, and feeling our world’s very real need for a Savior, I hope that you a finding a few moments here and there to take a quiet breath and give thanks.  Among other things, we are thankful that we have already been told the good news:  that Jesus has come and that Jesus will come again.  In a world that often feels overshadowed by human neglect and disregard and power games, we’re the lucky ones:  we already know that the Light is here and that it will someday fill the earth, and everything beyond. 

Accepting God’s timing is very hard.  We have our own work to do, to be sure, but we cannot control all of the variables around us, however much we (I) wish we could.  Waiting is hard, especially in the face of pain and grief.  And knowing our limits is also very hard.  Which brings us back to trust—to faith.  We don’t understand why things unfold the way they do, why God doesn’t intervene in every situation.  And we can bring our anger and frustration to God—the psalmists do.

As I write this letter this week, I’m up at Olmstead Manor, a beautiful Methodist property in Ludlow, Pennsylvania. I’m here for part of the training for my provisional residency, as I continue my ordination process. We’ve had two days of communication and conflict utilization, and we’re about to have two days on diversity and inclusion.

While the timing could be better (in this middle of Advent?!), the training is rich and informative and the fellowship with other clergy is very restorative. It’s a fitting prelude to this Sunday’s Advent theme of Peace. I have a room to myself, meals are provided, and I have no one to take care of. I even get walks in the snow and an evening or two by the fireside. The peace here only reemphasizes that seasonal sense of waiting, of anticipating a big event.

As we wait to celebrate Christ’s birth, we continue our gratitude practice.