Second Church Steps

I sat in the sanctuary Sunday, and it felt VAST.   Some might think of it as “empty…” but there was a huge sense of space and a connection to beyond the walls.   I realized that Our Church circle is SO WIDE! We were gathered, in our own homes, but each of us was there standing, kneeling, sitting,and  praying together before our God.   Your home is a “room” in the House of God if we gather in the name of Jesus Christ.   Kid’s club has been talking a lot about how we do not do “random” acts of kindness.   We do them on purpose!   We do INTENTIONAL acts of kindness in the name of Jesus Christ.   We do them because Jesus asked us to do them! God helps us to do them! It is part of who we are and WHOSE we are as God’s beloved children. One activity from Kids Club is the “I CAN” cube .   It helps to remind us that, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).  You can do this at home.   Take an em...

Parental confession:   my children did not grow up on Mr. Rogers.   They just didn’t fall into that group. They were more Barney and Sesame Street.   This bothered me for a VERY long time.   It bothered me like, how “we ought to be going to church, but we aren’t” bothers some other parents. Is watching Mr. Rogers the same as going to church?   No.   Words matter and Fred Rogers was carefully and fully inclusive; he never spoke of “God” or “sacraments,” but his neighborhood was a study in formation, children’s radical formation where all are welcome, feelings are named, and children are respected. I think it is Kingdom work to facilitate those same things being found at church.   No, not just at Sunday School – which is usually story telling focused and appropriation tasked.   I mean, at church: At coffee hour where there are tables for their size among the adult-sized tables.   At worship where there are “movement breaks” and we...

As parents of young children, the one thing that remains the same from day to day and year to year is CHANGE! It sometimes seems that our children grow overnight; sometimes they do! It has been 500 years since  one big change occurred in the church, The Reformation.  Okay, it was more like sowing seeds of change.  As Presbyterians we  speak about being “reformed and always reforming,” which is another way of saying “changed and always changing.”   What should this change look like?  Well, there have been committees, sessions, kings, queens, popes, and wars about that throughout Church History.  However, in Matthew 18:3 (NIV), the Bible quotes Jesus, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” There is a lot of change coming up for our children. There is a new school year which begins NEXT WEEK for some of us. August 6 th   will be "Promotion Sunday" at Second Church...

I am on the cusp of VBS, and my thoughts have turned to food.  Well, it is only natural since this year's Vacation Bible School  is about planting, gardening, seeds, and harvesting.    The Gravely Tractor and Wagon Have you heard of the “new” food approach called Farm to Table?  That is where the consumer/cook is mindful that the food on our plate is a product of the food grown on the farm.  When I was growing up, that was called, “Granddaddy’s Garden.”  My grandfather was an accountant, but in middle Tennessee that didn’t mean he couldn’t “hoe a row” in the backyard.  My grandfather’s garden was kind of “farm sized.”  It was a good acre or so and fed his household, his daughters’, and quite a few neighbors’ as well.  The string beans wound their way up the corn stalks, and there were some spots on those apples which would still burst with flavor.  Add into this mix that my grandfather had advanced glaucoma and could not s...

Covenants are important and life giving moments in our lives as Christians.  They are moments of promise and faith.  They are moments of action and attention.  They  are important moments that have a unique beginning. These promises are not chores to check off or dates circled on a calendar; they are holy promises that begin with God.  They all begin with God choosing us and choosing to be in a relationship with us.  In return we are loved, claimed, and wanted.  This gives us the freedom to respond with truth, kindness, caring, and service to others. We learn about truth when we read God's book of hope and good news.  We care for God's people both our friends, neighbors and ourselves by participating in  Sunday School, Choir School, or VBS. We serve others by living as a people of promise. How do we live as  promise people?  We do it by remembering that we are HOLY PROMISE People  and lived the truth that so is our neigh...

(Spiritual Practices for Families: Giving Thanks) Where is the Love? In December, amidst the wrappings and the shouts of glee, we found a quiet time to come to the manger and contemplate the great Love that God sent, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Here, as sparkling Christmas lights give way to snow and rain and ice, as gathered family gives way to bill paying and schedule keeping, how might we hold on those manger moments when we embraced the Love that embraces us? In these more ordinary days, can we still see the light that leads us to Bethlehem, to the ordinary extraordinary places where Love shows up? Here is my invitation to you, and to your children:  Pause... in the middle of your "what's next" life... to see, hear, touch, smell, taste... all the amazing that is right here and now.  Point it out to one another like we might point out the twinkling lights on a Christmas tree.  Give thanks... for the warmth of the sweater, the wag of the do...

We made it! Christmas is over!  Well, not quite yet, it isn’t.  There are those pesky twelve days of Christmas.  The celebrating could go on and on, if we let it! Goodness, the tree is looking dry and empty without a load of boxes and bags underneath it. The ornaments that were hung with surprise, joy, and fondest memories now look somehow out of place.  Can we for one moment stop, and think about this?  Think about that first rush of joy when a new child is born, when you first really felt the presence of the living God in your life?  What about the first time a young Sunday School class looked at you in awe of the wonderful stories you were telling them?  That moment sparkled with hope that was bursting with possibility!  Here and now in the “ bleak mid-winter ” of post-New Years, to borrow from  Christina Rossetti and hymn 144 in the Presbyterian Hymnal Glory to God , we find ourselves in the sleep deprived, post-adrenaline rush, vi...

Ask a small child to arrange a nativity scene and you might get something like this… My daughter did something similar to this during her first “active” Christmas Holiday season.  That's the 1.5 year old Christmas where she was making meaning and learning faith stories as fast as her church family and I could tell them to her. She helped me set up our family nativity set minus Jesus; we did this  because we wait until Dec. 24 th after church to find Jesus in the manger.  She looked at each piece and named them.  Explaining the story as she went through the box of precious figures, she placed each one with care.  When she finished all I could see were the backs of the shepherds, sheep and camels.  I couldn’t see Mary AT ALL!  It was all wrong.  As a young mother is want to do, I explained gently that the set should be set up in a “V” so we could see each individual piece. As an almost two year old/who thinks she is an adult will invari...

Christmas decorations are up everywhere.  It is now “okay” to have trees, tinsel, and carols up front and center.  These are signs of the times, and a way that we prepare our homes and hearts to celebrate the birth of Jesus.   Music is a BIG part of the holidays for me. When I was pregnant with my first child, one Christmas carol could reduce me to tears.  Every time!  I’ve sung it for over half a century.  It is part of my Christmas narrative, and owns me in some way.  It is “Away in a Manger.” Away in a manger, no crib for his bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. [i] The part that always got me is the “no crib for his bed.”  He didn’t even have a crib!  What kind of world is it that a baby has to sleep in the dirt? Yes, I was a bit dramatic.  Still…it is a lasting understanding that children should be held and...

“Oh there’s no place like home…” Christmas music could be heard in my house, growing up, the day after Thanksgiving.  This signaled the start of the Advent/Christmas season. You see, Christmas music was forbidden until after Thanksgiving; even today from Texas and Kansas City my children are the enforcers of my mother's rule!  More often than not that first song would have been Perry Como’s   rendition of   Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays…   As Second Presbyterian Church transitions from the theme of “home” into the holiday season—we decorate our Second Home early.  We do this because we are preparing to take the Good News of the Advent/Christmas season out into the world through the Christmas Benevolence church wide program. The  Deacon’s Christmas Benevolence , CB, works with social service agencies to select 140+ families, that's 700+ people, to serve.  The entire church works together to make it possible for...

The end of October is a bittersweet time; the candy is sweet and the wind can be bitter cold.  It also is a time of sweet memories that have a bit of a bite!  Growing up as a minister's daughter  my sisters and I LOVED All Saints' Day music...especially, "I sing a song of the saints of God." Perfect people who do no wrong are often called "saints."   I have learned that those are really called, "people I don't know well."  Everyone is imperfect, and that is what makes us the perfect instrument for God's love.  The flaw is ours; the perfection is divine. Saints are messengers; in a world without Snapchat(tm) they are a glimpse of the goodness of the kingdom of God.         And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green... Okay, since our last name was "Green" we really liked that verse-- it was a nice counterpoint to church decoration which was NEVER called "the hanging of the greens...