BC Retreat this Saturday

I'm looking forward to our Bishop's Committee retreat this Saturday, February 27. We've had a BC retreat early in the year for many years, so we're building on that tradition.

The difference this year is that we've contracted with a consultant, Sue Clary, to lead our retreat. There's something very helpful about bringing in someone from outside an organization. For one thing, a consultant from outside brings a sense of perspective that insiders can't see. In addition, a consultant brings training and expertise to re-frame our issues. And thirdly, having a consultant present is stimulating and energizing.

We have two objectives: to find ways we can work together as a team, and to set our goals for the coming year. Sue will help us with both those objectives. We're meeting at St. Barnabas' Church in Bainbridge Island, a place we've never met before. I hope the newness of the setting will help us see things anew.

Sue, Bob Meith and I met together last week to plan the retreat. We've named our main areas of emphasis for the coming year as: improving our parish life, increasing our visibility in the community, and creating a process for long range planning.

It should be a good retreat and a fun time together. I'll write a report next week.

First session of the Connect? course

Yesterday we had our first session of the Connect? course, a six-week course to help us connect ourselves to God, to our faith, and to each other. The program considers Jesus' invitation to follow him onto a new order of peace and justice.

Nineteen people attended our first session, and it was an enjoyable evening. We sat at three tables and the discussions around the tables were lively. While we ate our dinner, we shared memorable meals we'd experienced in our lives. The presentation was about the feeding of five thousand people with a few loaves of bread. It focused on what a miracle it was that five thousand people trusted Jesus enough to eat with all different kinds of people, and asked us to envision a world in which everyone was accepted and welcomed.

After the presentation, we had conversations around six questions provided to us. The conversations are the most important part of the Connect? program. Conversations are where we share ourselves and learn to trust other people. From what I heard, our conversations were a success.

We had a most delicious soup with yummy breads and desserts to go with it. I think the atmosphere was upbeat, positive, and welcoming, and I thought it was a good start to our course.

Rearranging the chairs

Today we made a daring move in our church - we rearranged the chairs!

Yes, I know, it sounds like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic - of no significance to the larger direction of our parish. But changes in the arrangement of the worship space can be deeply threatening and strongly resisted by those who feel at home in the church.

I think this is because we have a sense of space when we worship that reinforces our sense of security and comfort. When we're sitting in our "place" in worship, we feel that the world is somehow right. "All's well in God's heaven." When our "place" is disturbed, we feel out of joint, displaced, jarred, unfamiliar.

What we did today was to create a center aisle in our church by moving the chairs forward and by angling the side sections. This makes more of a feel of openness and brings more of a focus to the center.

The change was made by me, with the encouragement of our Bishop's Warden, Bob Meith, and the members of the Liturgy and Music Commission at the beginning of their monthly meeting.

I'm sure we'll hear lots of feedback about this move, and I hope that our members will be resilient and flexible about this change. After all, sometimes a little change is good for us!
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Bishop Rickel's discussion book for Lent

Bishop Rickel has announced his discussion book for this Lent: Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal. Bishop Greg will lead the discussion on his blog at http://www.bishoprickel.com/  and everyone in the diocese is invited to join in. Last year for Lent, Bishop Greg led a discussion on The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle.

You can find the book on amazon.com at http://amzn.com/0470243449

Missional Renaissance is McNeal's second book. His first book, The Present Future, has been called "the definitive work on the 'missional movement,' i.e., the widespread movement among Protestant churches to be less inwardly focused and more oriented toward the culture and community around them" (from the Amazon review).


In Missional Renaissance he shows churches "the three significant shifts in their thinking and behavior that they need to make that will allow leaders to chart a course toward being missional: (1) from an internal to an external focus, ending the church as exclusive social club model; (2) from running programs and ministries to developing people as its core activity; and (3) from professional leadership to leadership that is shared by everyone in the community." (Amazon review)

I've ordered the book and I'm looking forward to reading it. Our bishop is keeping us on the leading edge of knowledge in the church today, and I want to be part of that conversation. Maybe you'll join me in reading and discussing this book.

Liturgical Arts for St. Antony's

Last week the Liturgical Arts team met to brainstorm how we might dress our worship space during Easter. Caroline gave us a very interesting report of her visit to the Diocesan Altar Guild meeting at the Cathedral the previous week.

The former head of the Diocesan Altar Guild looked at the photos of our worship space that Caroline provided and made a number of enlightening comments:

• We have lots of room to work with
• Our present hangings are too far apart and they pull the focus away from the altar area which should be the main focus
• The visual weight of our present arrangement is low (In other words, we don't have much to pull the eye upward) so everything we do should pull the eye up
• We should try to pull the focus into the altar area
• Possibly we could paint the wall behind the altar to provide a visual frame (possible using a sand color - not blue because we have too much blue coming in the windows)
• Possibly we could have two hangings, one on either side of the cross, which could be uneven in height (one higher and one lower)
• A dossal hanging might be a good way to frame the cross and altar area and to pull the eye up

I thought a dossal was an ingenious idea. A dossal is a wide hanging behind the altar area, often of a rich fabric such as a tapestry. We agreed that a hanging like that would be a good idea for our altar area.

A huge dossal that appears in the Almy catalog

Caroline brought a piece of some fabric that the Diocesan Altar Guild has available. It's a rich tapestry with flowers, and there's a larger piece we could use that would serve as a dossal. Caroline will pick up the fabric when she goes to Seattle next, and we'll meet again February 21 to see how it looks, and whether we need to line it or add fringe to it.

We also discussed using different colored dossals for different seasons of the church year, and we discussed whether we could use a frontal for the altar.

All in all, it was a fruitful meeting with some very creative ideas and plans.

Visiting Mary

Today I took communion to Mary, an elderly lady who is part of our congregation. Mary lives in an apartment for senior citizens where she is well cared for.

Mary is an elegant lady with a lovely North Carolina accent, and she takes great care in her appearance. Recently she had a slight stroke which affected one side of her face and she apologized for her drooping face and slightly slurred speech.

Mary is an artist, and her apartment walls are lined with portraits she's painted, especially portraits of her family. She shared stories with me about asking her parents if she could use the attic of their house for an art studio when she was a little girl, and how much fun it was when she got her first real oil paints and brushes. When I visit, I show her the sketches I've done recently, and we both enjoy viewing them. Today we looked at my sketchbook, had some conversation, and shared Holy Communion.

I love visits like these. I'm lucky to have a small enough church that I can make visits to parishioners in their homes and in the hospital. We also have many parishioners who visit our elderly and sick member, and that's an important lay ministry. I don't want to take that privilege away from them.

I want to visit anyone who has a terminal illness and those who are homebound for long periods of time, as a way of keeping in touch with them and assuring them they're still in the care of our church.

Getting back on the horse

I haven't posted on this blog for over a month now. What happened?

I'm not sure, except that I got overwhelmed during Advent/Christmas/Epiphany and haven't got back into the rhythm of posting on this blog. So now's the time to start again. Thanks to those who mentioned that you noticed!

Herbert O'Driscoll speaking

This week I did a  lot of traveling. Monday I went to a preaching workshop at St. Andrew's, Seattle. The speaker was Herbert O'Driscoll, the retired Dean of the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

He's a wonderful speaker, and reminded us of the basics of preaching for today:

• Stay with the Biblical text
• Tell stories
• Be yourself

On Tuesday, I traveled to Seattle with a parishioner who was gifting her unused computer to Cori, a young woman in need of a computer. My son Guy connected these two up. The three of us went together on the morning ferry and met Cori for lunch in Seattle. Cori is attending a school for massage therapy. A charming young woman, she told us about her recent trip to India and all the adventures she had. After lunch we transferred the computer, still in its box, to Cori, and came home.

St. John's, Olympia

On Wednesday, I drove to Olympia where we had a Clergy Day with Bishop Rickel. We spent the morning listening to a presentation on the new disciplinary canons for clergy. these canons were passed last summer at General Convention, and are a big improvement on the previous canons which were considered inflexible and rigid. The new canons have more steps and at each step there are possibilities for solving the problem by reconciliation or mutual agreement.

The Bishop also shared with us a number of things happening in the Diocese, such as the School of Theology, Commission on Emerging Mission, Convention this fall, and our new internet visionary.