ReThink WHAT??!!

I was making my way to Glide one morning, and when I stopped off BART at the Powell Street station, I looked around and saw that the station had been plastered with "RETHINK" ads.  I was excited to see this that The United Methodist "Rethink Church" campaign had invested to much in marketing in San Francisco.  Rethink Church is a four-year marketing strategy "to invite the church and those unchurched who seek spiritual fulfillment, to become more outwardly focused and engaged in the world." 

Well, imagine my surprise when I saw that these RETHINK ads had nothing to do with the church. They were for Bare Escentuals, a make-up company! 

I began to think about these two RETHINK campaigns.  The church is experiencing an aging membership, empty pews, and the inability to sustain mission and ministry due to decreased donations. 

I believe that the church possesses a life-giving message of transformation and liberation, so needed in our day and age! But too many of our churches have become museums and historical relics of a by-gone era.  Instead of looking unflinchingly at the world and seeing where faithful witness is needed, the church has turned inward.  Instead of engaging as bold disciples and offering the world ministries of compassion and justice, the church has too often turned its back on the cries of God's children.

I am glad The United Methodist Church is calling us to RETHINK the church...my only hope is that it is not a slick make-over job or a glossy cover-up.

Advent Day 3--Speaking the Word

We couldn't be more sure of what we saw and heard—God's glory, God's voice. The prophetic Word was confirmed to us. You'll do well to keep focusing on it. It's the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts. The main thing to keep in mind here is that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private opinion. And why? Because it's not something concocted in the human heart. Prophecy resulted when the Holy Spirit prompted men and women to speak God's Word.
2 Peter 1:19-21 from The Message

I will never forget when a seminary student visited Ecumenical House at San Francisco State University, where I was a campus minister. He took one look at our bulletin board, filled with announcements about all sorts of justice issues, protests, and symposiums, and proclaimed, "I want to be a campus minister so that I can say whatever I want!"

What he was implying was that he felt that pastoring a local church would muzzle the message he wanted to proclaim.  Campus ministry, at least through his eyes, offered him a free license to say what he wanted to.

I looked at him like he had two heads.

Preaching, offering the Good News, proclaiming the Word, is not saying what we want to say.  It is allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through us.  It is allowing sighs which are too deep for words to be filled with the breath of God and take shape as the Word.  It requires us to look at the world with open eyes and to have people in our lives who will challenge us to open our eyes further still.  With eyes wide open, we must allow our soul to be disquieted, to feel dis-ease, as we see this world, our communities, ourselves in all their flawed possibilities. It is then and only then that we can begin to bearers of God's prophetic Word.

It is never about saying what we want to say. It is about allowing the Spirit to birth the Word within us, and speaking it aloud. This can happen in a campus ministry, a local church, at your job, and in your family. Wherever we are in community with God's people, we can be bearers of this Word.