The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught. Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s take a break and get a little rest.” For there was constant coming and going. They didn’t even have time to eat. (Mark 6:31, The Message)

Recently I made the choice to leave all social media platforms, at least for now and maybe for good. I am encouraging you to do the same for this season of our collective cultural communal life. I love the words of Jesus hear to his disciples as The Message translation gives them: “Let’s take a break and get a little rest.” We might call it a self-imposed time out. Seems like a healthy step for us.

I love all the good things that facebook, instagram, and all the rest of the social media sites have to offer us — friend and family updates with pictures, sharing of life experiences, turbo birthday greetings, wonderful personal reflections and fruitful and constructive dialog around complex issues to name just a few.

But increasingly I sense that what sociological researchers have long been warning us about is coming to bear — that social media is making us more angry and that the echo chambers we find and groove with only make us more dangerously angry. It seems that every almost-daily act of mass violence and increasing acts of domestic terror are fueled by a hatred that social media finds a way of fanning into flame. Research consistently and definitively shows that rates of anxiety, depression, and addiction have increased exponentially for those who are regular social media users. And I am inundated by pastoral conversations with friends who have or are losing primary relationships largely because of hurtful communications on social media.

As I reflected above, there are wonderful blessings that social media offers us. And one thing is for sure, that social media is here to stay, and so we have to find ways to use this resource wisely and for good.

But for now, it seems to me like it would be a good spiritual discipline for us collectively to “take a little break and rest awhile.” Would you consider joining me in this, and maybe consider what else we might give our time and energy to? Acts of service, compassion, and kindness like warm cookies for a neighbor’s door, stocking shelves at the friendship center, or driving a senior in need to doctor appointments? Increased times of reading and quiet reflection outside our echo chamber, especially devotional in nature? More periodic moments for prayer? And a commitment to move toward our opposite, literally committing ourselves to face to face conversations over coffee or while breaking bread together?

One more word. For those of you who are not social media users, you also have a step to take. How about a time out from whatever is your preferred TV news channel that represents your own echo chamber? How about taking in no more than an hour of local and national news and instead going for a walk or a bike ride, working a puzzle or having brunch with a friend?

Think and pray about it. I’d love to share a conversation if you’d like. Let’s take a little break and get some rest.

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Rummage — an unsytematic and untidy search through a mass or receptacle.

Well, here we are. It’s rummage sale week! The evidence is that between yesterday noon and my arrival this morning it’s not only the gym that’s filled, but now the hallways and the narthex too! The tentacled creep of our stuff seems officially out of control.

I’m not down about it. Not at all! It’s a wonderful chaos, and a minor miracle to watch how we come together to get from here to 8 a.m. Saturday morning when we open the gym doors and the line stretching out to the parking lot rushes in. You should be here then. It’s quite a wild and wonderful moment.

I’m thinking about three things just now.

The first is, of course, our belongings. Clothes, dishes, end tables, Christmas ornaments, books, golf clubs and mostly expired electronics. We might think most of what we see borders on a word that begins with “J”, but if we think a bit more, we might reflect on how everything we bring comes with a story, a history, many holy moments. Who was sitting around the table and eating off these plates when life decisions were made? That Christmas ornament, whose hands placed it on the tree who is no longer with us at Yuletide? And whose hands gripped these clubs, and what legendary (and appropriately embellished) shot came from them? As we rifle through our clutter and make decisions about what to bring, what to let go of, all kinds of memories and experiences come alive again.

The second is who will come and rummage through all that we organize, and find what they feel are new treasures to travel through life with them. These things we gather together and bring will be on the move to dorm rooms and crawl spaces and new dinner tables and golf fairways and christmas trees. What are the stories of those who will soon stand in line, the hopes and sorrows that those who come through the doors bring with them?

Finally, For all the exhaustion that the rummage sale brings, it is beautiful to watch the way we come together as a community to see it through, surely more than at any other time during the year. In this sense, it’s a holy week all its own, as we encourage, and strengthen each other and work together in mission.

Don’t miss it! Come this week sometime, morning, noon or night, and meet some new friends, and fold some clothes or price some wares. And come on Saturday as we welcome friends from the community who are searching for all kinds of things. Let’s meet them, and welcome them into our community.

Rummage sale week reminds us of all that is holy that is at work in all that is mundane. Isn’t it true?

Love from here!

Peter Hawkinson

Here is a QR code you can access to sign up and volunteer.

As another program year at church begins (my fourth with all of you, I’m so grateful), youth group is back & so is one of the most essential parts of it… youth group games! 

I think youth group games are largely misunderstood– sometimes by students themselves, but more often maybe by the wider Church who may view this time spent at youth group as just a ploy to make sure that kids want to come back, so that they’ll invite friends, or so that they’ll burn some energy before we get to the “important”  part of the night: the lesson. And while those reasons I just mentioned are perhaps a part of the equation, they are miniscule in comparison to the real reason which is, we all need to play! 

The fun, silly, creative, and free parts of all of us suddenly become unlocked when we allow ourselves time to play, and often even more so, when we get a chance to have fun & laugh together. I believe wholeheartedly that God has instilled a need and desire for play and for fun in all of us. It is extremely honoring to God then, to engage with and not deny that part of ourselves that really could use a good laugh, a game, and some silly energy expressed. This is why we play games at youth group, so that our students know there are many ways to bring praise to God, including playing, being our whole selves, being who God made us to be, and encouraging that in one another too. The cherry on top is, when our need to play and have fun is met, I think we are all then open enough to interact with other more honest and alive parts of ourselves, often prerequisites to truly engaging deeply with God. 

So this year, I’m so excited to play some youth group games– from empire to globular to trashketball to goo. And while if you’re reading this you’re most likely not a youth group student, I’m wondering if you might feel invited to engage in regular rhythms of play too, much like we do each week together at youth group. Whether it’s doing a puzzle, playing a board game with your family or friends, dusting off that hobby, reconnecting with something you used to love to do as a kid (that spoiler, you likely still love to do!), or joining us at church for our Wednesday game nights once a month, or volleyball on Mondays, or basketball on Tuesdays. Play is a spiritual discipline and we are never going to grow out of needing it. 

Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for every activity under heaven… a time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to grieve and a time to dance. So would you make time to play this season? And would you be open to how God might just meet you there? 

With love,

Pastor Lynnea

I’m thinking today, as I do from time to time, about my childhood home’s telephone. It hung on the wall in the central hallway of our Chicago apartment, had an exceedingly long cord, was banana yellow in color, and when it rang someone had to come running. I can still see the sticky note pad where the “call so and so” messages were left on the wall. There were between 4 and 6 of us in the house through all my growing up years, and we managed just fine with that one phone, though nowadays I get a bit nervous just thinking about it. No caller ID? No Voicemail? No texts, and no smart qualities? No privacy for a conversation? How in the world did we survive?

Yet I must admit that I have nostalgic, almost romantic notions too about that hallway phone and the way our communications worked back then. Sometimes it became easier to just walk down the street and knock on someone’s door than wait for them to call back. Letter writing was still an art. Time had a much more expansive quality to it than now it does when instant availability and quick response is a cultural expectation. You know all the challenges of the smartphones we have and use these days, that come along with the many positives.

I find that I respond to the dings and the pings that come like a Pavlovian dog salivating at the sound of the bell associated with food. A good friend recently pointed this out to me, and it was something I needed to hear even though I didn’t want to. It’s such a tricky wicket, because with a smartphone comes this expectation that we are always on call, ever available, and so it becomes necessary to multi-task constantly, rendering us unable to be fully present wherever we are, whatever we’re doing. What to do?

This all comes to mind for me — the old yellow hallway phone and the one in my pocket now — and all our human progress, for better and for worse — and it’s affect on our souls, because on my way to the office this morning for some reason the simple invitation that Jesus gave to his disciples came into my mind:

“Come off by yourselves. Let’s take a break and get a little rest.” (Mark 6:31, the Message)

For Jesus and the disciples, the heat is on. Foreboding news of the beheading of John the Baptist has come. Who will be next? And there’s a crowd of 5000 sitting on the hillside, waiting for Jesus to say something, and the hour is getting late, toward supper time.

“For there was constant coming and going. They didn’t even have time to eat.” (Mark 6:32)

Hence the dilemma. I wonder to what degree I/we need our sabbath rest now more than ever, and how do I/we work at that when the phone keeps chirping and social media is calling us and we know that maybe not 5000, but 4 or 5 folks at least are waiting for our response? I have heard somewhere that there’s a movement back toward corded phones, and I wonder if this is an attempt to re-order life’s rhythm to some degree.

I have no easy answer to all of this, and I love life as it is these busy days! The blessings and the challenges of life always go together. What do you think?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

(Full disclosure, during the writing of this blog I heard from and responded to 5 emails and 4 text messages, got three advertisements and checked the cubs schedule. Just sayin!)

(Guest blogger this week is Royce Eckhardt)

Whenever the people of faith gather in any time or place to celebrate the mighty acts of God, they invariably sing—from the OT tabernacle and temple, to the early Christians, through the Medieval monasteries, the Reformation, to this very day. St. Paul tells us that when Christians gather, they bring a lesson, a prophecy, an interpretation, a hymn (I Cor. 14:26). We sing what we believe and believe what we sing.

One who has not been in church for most of a lifetime, but who was brought up in the nurture of the church as a child will remember some hymns and songs, although everything else about church life may be forgotten.  When all the sermons, the conferences, and Bible studies had faded from memory, the hymns we have learned many, many years ago are likely still to be in our memory banks.  It goes that deep.  Faith lives in song; song nurtures faith.

The basic beliefs and doctrinal understanding of most Christians have been shaped more by the hymns they have learned than, perhaps, by the preaching they have heard or the Bible studies attended. A seminary professor recently wrote: “Music has shaped my faith in childhood songs, tunes and texts from…hymnody of every time and place…I have sung my way into faith.  The preface to the United Methodist Hymnal states, “Next to the Bible, our hymnals have been our most formative resource.

Karl Barth, the renowned Swiss theologian, stated: The praise of God [in the community]…seeks to be expressed, to well up and be sung communally.  The Christian community sings…. from inner necessity it sings.  ….The praise of God which finds its concrete culmination in the singing of the community is one of the indispensable basic forms of the ministry of the [Christian] community.

German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave us a wonderful insight into the congregational singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.  He said, “It is the voice of the church that is heard in our singing. It is not you that sings, it is the church that is singing, and you, as a member . . . may share in its song. Thus all singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the church.”

Hymn singing might be one of last places in our culture where people sing together, and perhaps the only place where there is intergenerational community singing.

That’s why we sing in church—it is an important part of our spiritual formation and nurture and a most significant part of our communal Christian experience.

Royce Eckhardt