Preacher on the Plaza

A new development at Washington Plaza is the growth of the young professionals group. Those of us under 40 are beginning to meet together on a regular basis both for the fun of being together but supporting each other in the community called Washington Plaza that we love.

Kevin and I hosted the group at our house on Saturday evening. We had a hilarious time of trying out Katia and LaTia’s games on their Wii.  We learned that my musical rhythm is lacking (surprised?) Edwina has never been bowling (must change this soon). LaTia can teach the newbies how to bowl well. Kevin makes rocking tapas. Ryan has hidden director skills. Katia is the master of the drums. Victor is really great at guitar hero (well on the easy cycle). And, Ellis picks out great wine. Among many other things. . . .

Thought I share these pictures as they are to be celebrated in the life of our church.

1. You can get more things done if you make friends. It is no understatement to have made a friend.

2. If you fail, if you mess up, say you are wrong. People will respect you for that.

3. Find your purposes in life, even if it not what you first imagined for yourself, and live it out with gusto.

4. When life hands you a tragedy, the best you can do is get up, support the ones you love, and do what you can to make the world a better place.

5. Work and play can be mixed– a bit douse of both makes for great fulfillment in life.

6. It is good to make friends, with those you don’t like. Living into the best of what humankind can be comes as Democrats are friends with Republicans, liberals are friends with conservatives and those who seemingly have nothing in common find common ground.

7. Matthew 25 can be a be a guiding light for those who care about serving the least of these . . . even those who choose to serve from the halls of Congress.

8. Marriage can serve as great stability to a person– marriage where both persons are seeking the best for the other person above all else.

9. When hard times comes, it is good to be surrounded by a community of prayer especially in the church.

10.  And, finally, “The fundamental trait of our society is how it treats the least of those among us.” -Ted Kennedy

In a world and a part of the country filled with constantly busy people with blackberries full of commitments, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of sacred time both in the church and in my own life as well.

Being in the volunteer business, the church is constanly asking for commitments of time of its members. Will you teach ESL  this fall for a couple of hours? Will you serve on this committee and stay after church monthly for a meeting? Will you volunteer in the nursery?

Though it is easy to to take such responsiblities for granted, any commitments of time to ministry is indeed sacred. There are thousands of other things Washington Plaza and other church folks could be doing with their time. But, in making the choice to give it to the church it is a gift to be celebrated.

I would even go as far to say that such moments of service should be savored as beautiful: teachers leading ESL classes and children’s Sunday School. Persons taking collections of food to the Community Pantry. Members gathered around talking about how to improve the logistics of our worship services.

While they only last for an hour or two, the effects are long lasting. These are moments that say what we are doing as a church makes a difference in people’s lives. They are moments that we can know what we are doing does matter in the world.

But I think sacred time can be found in the most ordinary of life situations.

Conversations with friends where insight is gained and communion of thought is felt. Moments of being with someone you love and not having to say anything at all, but knowing what they might be thinking by looking at their face. Moments of having eyes to see blessings all around you that you’d normally overlook. Moments of enjoying a meal with taste buds to enjoy every bite.

Yet, while all of this sounds nice, it is all the more difficult to claim this kind of time on a regular basis for yourself.

As soon it seems that I set aside for something that I love “Pilates class Thursdays” or “date night” or even “day off” it seems that keeping such activities scared is difficult. 

Folks become deathly ill requiring a visit. It is a conference week out of town. I’m behind on something that had a immediate deadline that just can not wait. Church activities that find their way to the weekend. Or, even yet, plans are made with folks who also have trouble keeping their schedule simple too! It all turns into a never ending  plan B, plan C, you get the point . . .

Having consistent amounts of sacred time in your life, I think has a lot to do with not only saying “no” to the stuff in life that doesn’t matter, but with continuing to claim time as sacred even when it doesn’t come easily.  Saying: “I will rest today. I will go to the gym. I will make Sunday morning worship an important part of my spiritual life.”

Without this kind of gumption, I fear, you and I will continue to be swayed along life’s path doing a lot of stuff that we neither care about nor feeds or soul.

Here’s to wishing you many moments of sacred time in the week ahead!

People often ask me who visit our church, “Are you sure you are Baptist?”

Yes, Washington Plaza is a Baptist Church. Officially we are members of the American Baptist Churches USA, the Alliance of Baptists, the DC Baptist Convention, the NorthStar Church Network and the Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. All connections that make us Baptist, I suppose.

I guess all of this would make us feel pretty important or at least well-connected. But think it makes us confused. We haven’t been particularly involved with any of these groups in recent years (some more than others, but still).

What kind of Baptist church are we? Who are our like-minded friends? With whom can we partner?

Such are important questions for any church with a denomination tied to its name and especially for any pastor in their first year of ministry with a new congregation.

Many years before I came, Washington Plaza had an important discussion about what beliefs matter most to them in their life together. The question on the table was: “Are we really Baptists? Or, should we drop the name altogether?”

With guidance from our local denominational leaders, the question was answered with a resounded YES! we are Baptists (even with all of the crazy stereotypes associated with it) because everyone felt good that our missions and values were in line with historical Baptist principals. According to one Baptist theologian here they are:

Soul Freedom – The individual is responsible to none except God, is totally competent to stand before God, and is capable of discerning meaning and action in life and practice under the direct inspiration of the Spirit of God and Holy Scripture.

Bible Freedom – The Bible is our authority in matters of faith and practice and is to be interpreted in its entirety, using the best scholarship and the discernment of the community.

Church Freedom – We are autonomous and congregational in governance. Our practices, policies, associations, and ministries are set by the congregation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture.

Religious Freedom – The Church and civil government are independent of each other (separation of church and state). We support a free Church and a free state, separate and individually responsible to God.

But, even with all of this being true, there are still problems. Did you know that there are over 100 different kinds of Baptists? Just to say that you are attending a Baptist church is not specific enough. Because of local church autonomy every one you attended in a given area could be completely different.

This is our problem– we are different. We are a welcoming bunch of folks who aren’t afraid to be unique.

Thus, the problem is (from my perspective) that we find ourselves not fitting in with most Baptist groups. It is as if we are the long lost strange cousin that others in the room don’t want to play with. But, yet we know the call of the local church is not to sit as an island, but to be connected with others.

My colleague, Jim Somerville who is Pastor of First Baptist Church in Richmond, recently wrote about this topic in his blog. Click here to read it.

My response to Jim was this: 

I am not sure what kind of baptist I am either. I think just baptist seems to fit me too. However, it seems being the pastor of a baptist church you have to pick. This is the part that I have trouble with. What kind of church am I going to help my people become? What do they need from outside our local church that requires me to connect them with a particular baptist group over another? If you have any thoughts on this, please share. I am finding that I/ my church really don’t fit the mold of any of the Baptist groups. We are just happy to be on our own path seeing where the adventure of church takes us in Reston.

And this was his response. I share it here as a way to start the conversation among us about what denominational loyalty means, especially in churches as different as ours.

These are good questions, Elizabeth.

I have served as pastor of four Baptist churches now and each of them was established before the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention. I can almost picture the business meeting at which someone said, “There’s this new organization called the Southern Baptist Convention that sends missionaries to the ends of the earth. Let’s sign up!” And they did. They saw the SBC as a way of fulfilling the Great Commission. Somewhere along the way we got denominational loyalty confused with our loyalty to Christ. We forgot that it was his mission we were trying to fulfill and ended up fighting over control of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I think the right question to ask is: who will help us fulfill the mission of Christ? Baptist churches are free to determine their own mission and ministry, and if you decide your mission is to help provide clean drinking water to the people of Malawi, then you find someone who is doing that successfully and join in. Or you start a ministry to skateboarders in Northern Virginia and invite others to join you. What you’re looking for is a way to fulfill the mission of Christ. Beware of any earthly organization that claims to be the way. We already know The Way, and his name is Jesus.

Maybe then I am asking the wrong questions. Maybe it is not just about denomination but about mission and ministry– wherever this takes us.

What do you think?

Today our theme for worship centered on the simplicity of possessions– thinking again about what our stuff says about our priorities and how we might be depriving the abundance of God from going forth in the world.

I gave the following challenge at the end of the sermon. Might you be up to this (in what community you find yourself in)? 

. . . . I don’t always ask for directed response, but this week, I am going to challenge you to two ways to live out this sermon and the simplicity of possessions.

 First, go home this week and clean out your food pantry if you have one. Though a simple task, you might be amazed what you find. Many of us shop for can goods and products that we already have. Go home and take out all the food items that you haven’t used in a couple weeks and you don’t plan to eat in the next week. What you will find, like we did, that you have much to offer others. Bring what you find to church next Sunday and donate your non-perishable food items to our food drive for Reston Interfaith. I already can’t wait to see those baskets outside overflowing!

Second, go home this week and sort through some of your possessions. Start in your closet. What I imagine you’ll find is one miserable load. Stuff filling your space that you do not use nor you really want.  As you do this, I want you to take at least one thing (and hopefully a lot more) to donate to another one of our ministry partners like the Closet in Herndon. If you can’t make it the trip, bring it to church next Sunday and we’ll make sure it get finds it way there. I can’t wait to get a call this week from Aaron Sawyer telling me that Washington Plaza folks have been bringing it to the Closet this week!

I am asking you to do these two things because I want all of us to live even more fully into the joy that can be ours through the simplicity of possessions.

 Let us not be weighed down any more in misery. Let us instead rise up and use what we have so that the abundant blessings of God in our hands can be used to bring forth life in our community.

Let us share and stop hoarding, trusting that as we God our abundant God will supply all our needs.

Let us experience again the joy out of the abundance of sharing!

Due to the fact that Kevin had recent stomach surgery and is on a limited diet as he learns to eat all over again, the talk of our household this summer has been a lot about food.

Conversations like: “How many protein grams does this have in it?” “Do they make that product in a sugar free version?” and “It’s time to eat another small meal again!” happen on a regular basis on.

What I am realizing is how consuming what we put in our mouths is– planning for meals, talking about foods we like and don’t like, and making meetings around food is an unavoidable part of our culture.

But, even more so than this, I am even more aware now how HARD it is to live a healthy lifestyle when we get so many other messages to live differently.

Fast food signs and advertisements are everywhere. Healthy choices of food are so hard to find if you don’t pre-plan all your meals. TV commercials and spreads in magazine pages seem to all allure us toward eating things that are generally not the best choices for our body. We eat out (where we have no control over portion size, fat content, added ingredients) way too much!

And the same is true in churches. I have been told on several occasions in different church settings the following about food:

a) We needed to eat as much as possible at a church potluck so there would be no left overs.

b) I needed to fatten up (a.k.a. I needed to eat that extra piece of pie that I didn’t really want).

c) Having a plate full of food  (that was generally not healthy) was the Baptist way (or insert your church of choice here)

The countercultural way that I think we as Christians are being asked to think about food is to lay aside all of these requirements for church dinners and other occasions too.

Food is meant to be fuel of our bodies.

Food is meant to nourish our well-being so that our physical frame can support the work of our hands.

Food is meant to make us feel better, not cause more health problems for us in the future.

Even though it is SO hard, our family is learning all over again to make good choices about when and what we eat. And, I am more committed than ever to do so. Not only because I want to support the lifestyle changes of Kevin, but because I’m saying enough is enough.

It is time to say no to all the comfort foods which in the end will just bring us more long term problems than the blessed feeling in the short term. It is time to be serrious again about the life and body God has given us. It is time to say no to the alluring ads everywhere for food that is no good for us, even as hard as this might be.

It is time to bring the word discipline back into our conversations about food.

It is time to say no to the American way of food, food and more food without giving thanks for the blessing of living in a country where we do not go to bed hungry (well, for many this is true). And, then making a pledge to use our blessings of food in ways that honor the life we have been given.

Does this quest interest anyone else out there?

In response to my last blog post about my trip to GA and preaching experience at Farmdale Baptist, I wanted to say how thankful I was for the opportunity to be there and to be welcomed for the second time. I was thankful for the kindness of my mother-in-law, especially as she was really encouraging about my being there.

In a a part of the country where few if any women are allowed in the pulpit, it was an honor to be the preacher for the service on Sunday.

However, while I was preaching and upon further reflection afterwards, I found myself asking these questions:

I wonder what folks at the door were thinking when they said “joyed it” after the service? (It is like some secret southern code– not really sure what it means? And they almost ALL said it).

I wonder what the young teenage girl on the back row was thinking as she watched me enter the pulpit instead of the man she sees every Sunday?

I wonder what the folks were thinking as I spoke the words of my message as passionately as I could- did they hear what I was saying? Or were they wondering why I didn’t have a similar style as everyone else they usually hear (aka Jesus saves, let’s be excited about heaven, and get others to get on the bandwagon too)?

I wonder what the usher was thinking when he prayed for the pastor of the day and caught himself using the pronoun “him” but then corrected himself to say “her” about me?

I wonder what talk was around town after hearing that a woman preached at their church? 

I wonder.

But whatever the case might be to any or all of these questions, what I do know is this- I came, I preached, and left.

I look forward to being back on Sunday morning to the supportive preaching environment I live in called Washington Plaza Baptist Church. I am one lucky woman to be in a pulpit each week that is so receptive to my approach to preaching the gospel that is based on theology, Biblical study and a  big douse of life experience that tells me I haven’t gotten everything figured out yet so I better leave room for more questions than answers.

I’ll continue to wonder. . .

This Sunday, I will be away from Washington Plaza. Rev. Bill Tatum will be preaching and the church will be in good hands with his capable leadership.

I will be preaching at Farmdale Baptist Church in Sylvania, GA. I have been invited back for the 2nd time. I preached there once in 2008. The following was my experience below. I’m hoping to have more of a comfort level there this year (or they with me at least).

You can keep me in your thoughts on Sunday morning and I’ll be sure to tell you how it goes.

To give you an idea about what a big deal this is, read below what I wrote on January 24, 2008:

This past weekend, Kevin and I traveled to his home in Georgia for the weekend. Because I was to attend a conference in St. Simon’s Island during the beginning of this week, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for us to spend some quality time with his family and for me to keep a promise I made long ago to Kevin’s family.

I said one day I would happily accept the invitation to preach at their church.

It is important to note here that Kevin’s home church never had hosted a woman preacher before. Not because I think any of them don’t like women or not even because they are people who are Biblical literalists who feel men are above women spiritually, but for the sheer reason they they’d never had the opportunity to know a woman in the pastorate.

The presence of someone like me in their pulpit just wasn’t ever a possibility until me and my group of preacher friends became a part of their lives.

So enter Elizabeth into the pulpit: I was prepared, ready and couldn’t wait bring the word to the best of my ability. I crafted the sermon in such a way that I thought they would identify with, especially picking just the right words and illustrations. I thought through what might be ever possible scenario of what might occur. But I had forgotten to consider how a female presence would affect them personally.

So when I got through the first paragraph, I knew I was in trouble. Speaking to twice the size congregation than is usually present on Sundays (which was around 80 people), I felt like I was an exotic animal exhibit in a zoo. I was the newest rare bird that had been brought into the scene and they didn’t know what else to do but to keep looking at me with a deep stare.

And they kept starring at me throughout the sermon. I was anxious to say “Amen” and be through with the message as soon as I could. I was ready to go back to the normalcy of being the pulpit with my own congregation.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve watched footage from town hall meetings on the topic of health care reform. Though you can never tell how the media source is telling or not telling you the whole story, these clips have featured lots of angry people yelling at each other and their congressmen, senatorsand even the President. It has been disturbing to to watch!

The worst have been the name calling and the chanting of negative slogans toward one side or another. Above all showing unrest on what government run health care might mean for the future of our country.

I have to say that as I’ve watched, I’ve thought about what the church might have to say about all of this.

Not necessarily topic of health care (good for a discussion in a different forum), but on how we speak to each other as human beings, as citizens in the global community that we call the United States of America.

In my corner of the church, we are a close knit group. We often act like any family unit would. We sometimes don’t agree on everything . . .

When I talk about conflict, what I always come back to is this: it is only natural that we as unique human beings are going to fight from time to time and are going to think someone we are in community with has gone crazy because of something they say or do.  But, the DIFFERENCE in a community of faith is how we handle it.

Or, otherwise stated as: how we learn to listen to each other. Or, how we learn to say “I’m sorry.” Or, how to confess that maybe we don’t have all the answers and do have something to learn from those most disagreeable from us.  Or, how we deal with an issue and then move back to the task of being a community together.

This morning at a church meeting such was the case. There were folks with strong opinions about different issues. Passion was ignited.

But, what happened was that we all kept talking. And kept talking until we all got to a place of consensus. We talked until we all felt good about the conclusions reached. And, no one left the room mad or throwing things at each other, or even name calling. We greeted each other warmly at the door.

At least from my perspective, it seemed what happened to me was that we modeled was the best of what it means to be human and followers in Christ’s way.

Logistically, this meant that not everyone got what they wanted. Personal preferences were laid aside. And, it was hard work!

But, it was the best I think of what the church can offer in times like these when shouting matches and name calling is what makes news. There is another way. There is a better way of dealing with conflict. And, it can happen in groups full of diversity on average Tuesday mornings like today.

Let’s keep working together on this, church– our culture needs us now more than ever.

On July 26th, for those of you who missed it, Washington Plaza shared a joint church picnic with our sister church, Calvary Baptist Church in DC. The idea for this event came about when we discovered that our church and their church camp were less than 10 miles a part! It was a great opportunity for shared conversation and fellowship.

Thank you, Calvary for inviting us. We look forward to hanging out again soon. Read more about Calvary’s take on this event by clicking here.

Here are some of our photos, thanks to Alex Burke!