Book 7 of 2022 Building God's Beloved Community: Discipleship in The United Church of Canada

Over the last few years multiple voices within the United Church have named a need for a new resource to use in confirmation classes. This book is one approach to meeting that need.

The 14 chapters (16 if you include the introduction and the conclusion) of this book are meant to provide an introduction to Christian faith and discipleship, with several chapters that focus that introduction on a specific denomination. The suggestion is to have an extended study group, looking at one chapter a session. I think there is logic in that selection, though I wonder if a couple of the chapters might be combined in one session. And I am not sure I would cover the topics in the order they are found in this volume.

The chapters are well-written and engaging. They have much in them to spark discussion. I think they would work well as an introductory tool and as a tool for more experienced church members to deepen/reawaken their faith. I wonder about  group that would have both new and experienced church folk discussing these topics.

There are two caveats I find. One is that, as Gary Paterson names in the foreword, this sort of study is about the thinking aspect of Christian faith. It has little to engage other aspects of the life of faith, though the one chapter on spiritual practices at least opens the door a bit (personally i am tempted to start a study group with that chapter and then start each successive session with a different spiritual practice. The other shortcoming I found was that there was not a chapter, and no real discussion in any chapter, about stewardship. Stewardship in all its forms is a key part of discipleship so this lack surprises me. However, since stewardship is our response to God's activity in our lives I suppose stewardship questions can be raised in conjunction with some of the topics.

Now to figure out how to structure the study group I intend to offer over the fall/winter season next year.

Book 6 of 2022 --Keys to the Kindom: Money and Property for Congregational Mission in The United Church of Canada

 Seemingly out of nowhere, this book arrived in the mail a couple months ago. The cover letter named that as we prepare for the 100th Anniversary of the United Church of Canada in 1925 a free copy was being sent to every community of faith across the country. After looking at it for several weeks I decided it should be read (a free book is almost always worth the cost after all).

The question of how best to use the assets of the church for ministry is always a challenging one. The question of how best to fund the ongoing work of ministry is a challenge in many congregations. The question of how to grow our mission and ministry in new ways often gets lost in the worry about funding what is already happening.

In almost every church I have worked with the biggest single asset is the property and the building. It is true that sometimes the building is a source of concern due to aging structures and/or deferred maintenance. It is also true that in many United Church congregations the building is a gift shared with the wider community. For many of us part of how we live out our faith is by offering our space to community groups.  Some of those groups would have a hard time finding a space without that opportunity.

Looking forward into the future, we need to ask how we will fund, sustain, and grow our ministries, both as individual congregations and as a denomination. How can we ensure that our communities of faith are around for future generations? This book tells stories that might help us understand how it has been done in the past, is being done in the present, and could possibly be done in the future. The push for all communities of faith to create a multi-million dollar endowment seems overly optimistic to me, as do some of the hopes for events around the 100th Anniversary weekend in June of 2025. However if the book makes us think and dream and vision then it will have done its job.

Of special interest to me was the discussion of how some places are redeveloping and making new uses of their properties. I know of several congregations where this is a needed discussion, one that needs to grow out of a discussion of how they can best help meet the needs of their communities. A lot of us are in buildings that we would not build now, either because the design does not let us gather as we would prefer to, or because they are bigger than we need/space is not used as we would like to use it now. In the United Church of Canada (and many other denominations) we have a lot of value in property, how can we best use those assets to participate in the work God is doing in/around/through us?

PS: in the middle of the book we learn how it is that all congregations could get a free copy. It is part of an endowment agreement made within the authors' congregation.

Book 5 of 2022 -- My Best Mistake

 

I have enjoyed Terry O'Reilly for a long time. I remember listening first to his show The Age of Persuasion years ago (thought I would have sworn that was longer ago than 2006) and now I regularly listen to Under the Influence both on Thursdays and Saturdays (sometimes you need to listen twice to catch everything). Because I have always found him to be a great storyteller I thought this book would be good for a light bit of reading. I was right.

However one of the reasons I so enjoy O'Reilly's work is not just because of the (well researched and well told) stories. It is the way he uses the stories to share key understandings of how the world (particularly the world of marketing) works. In the stories and the reflections I often find bits of wisdom that apply to a variety of settings.

Nobody likes to make mistakes. Naturally enough, most of us avoid it at all costs. But in this book we find people whose lives would have been very different, and arguably much less profitable, if they had avoided making a key mistake. The cover art tells the whole story. Does it say biggest mistake or best mistake? Or possibly both?

I suspect that for each person whose story is told in this book the line between biggest and best mistake is only truly discernible in hindsight. I wonder how many of us can say that in our own history? These are great stories in and of themselves. But looking deeper, should we maybe be more willing to make mistakes because we are taking risks? After a catastrophic mistake (or even a minor mistake that feels catastrophic at the time) many of us are tempted to just give up. Maybe the aftermath of the mistake can in fact lead us to a new way of being, a new resurgence?

Book 4 of 2022 -- The Art of Gathering

 

Why do we gather? How can we make out gatherings more meaningful? What mistakes do we make that take away from our gatherings? These are important questions for the church to ask. Mind you I think we so often fall into repetition and habit and tradition that we don't stop to ask them. And more importantly ,we forget to ask if the answers maybe have changed over time.

To be totally honest, while I sort of knew that these were important questions they were not things I routinely considered (probably still are not). But when I saw this book I realized there was something we needed to talk about as we try to find the way forward for the church these days.

I actually think most leaders should read this book as part of their planning processes. I really do wonder how it might change our Sunday morning gatherings, or our governance meetings, or our social events. Do we really have a clear purpose for why we are there? Do we have a plan to create an alternate space/reality for a period of time? Do we transition in and out of the space clearly and well? Often I think the answer is no when it could be yes.

I may have to re-read sections of this one if I want to re-vision how Sunday morning worship could work....