Imagine a new kind of Christmas

Shane Claiborne shares his thoughts on re-imagining Christmas within the context of Christian worship and life on the God’s Politics blog.  Please do yourselves a favor and read it.

Here’s an excerpt:

Instead of the usual holiday décor and clutter of the sanctuary, they brought in a bunch of manure and hay and scattered it under the pews so the place would really smell like the stank manger where it all began. I remember laughing hysterically as he described everyone coming in, in all their best Christmas attire, only to sit in the rank smell of a barn. They even brought a donkey in during the opening of the service that dropped a special gift as it mosied down the aisle.

Okay, so who has a donkey and a good supply of manure we can use for our March to the Manger service?  (just kidding, folks!)

 

Christ the King Sunday

It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving, traditionally known as Christ the King Sunday.

In the Gospel of Mark – most likely the earliest of the four canonical Gospels – Christ is the king but his throne is a cross.  Mark challenges us to rethink our ideas about what a Messiah is, who God is, how God is experienced and understood, and where God can be encountered.  God moves outside the holy-of-holies and appears in the middle of nowhere with John the Baptizer, and is fully encountered in the life of some hillbilly from Galilee named Jesus.  Seriously.  The religious leaders have it all wrong and this “nobody” has it right.

So for this Christ the King Sunday, let’s rethink what it means to make Christ the King in our lives.

• It means that we take his words, his deeds, his teachings and his actions as seriously as we take the narrative of his birth, death and resurrection.
• It means that our commitments to follow his teachings and example come before family, work and the accumulation of nice things.
• It means that Christ is more important than church.

If you haven’t read anything by Tony Campolo or Jim Wallis, I recommend you do.  They have a lot of valuable things to say for the life of the church.  The two of them have come up with a new term that I love: Red Letter Christians.

Red-Letter Christians take the words of Jesus seriously (printed in red in many Bibles, hence the name), and place extra emphasis or priority upon what Jesus actually taught and said, even over the teachings of Paul or the Old Testament.  They believe the church has made too big a deal over certain issues while virtually ignoring the things that Jesus taught about most.

Ouch.

But they are very convincing, and I’m certain I’m guilty.  Color me convicted.  Just getting the Jesus part of the Bible right is a difficult enough task without the six hundred do’s and don’ts in the OT and Paul.

So I believe that if we really want to call Christ the King in our lives, then we really should be red-letter Christians.

Here are some links for further reading:

• Who We Are
• What’s a Red-Letter Christian? by Tony Campolo
• Red-Letter Christians entry at Wikipedia
• When Red is Blue: Why I’m Not a Red-Letter Christian by Stan Guthrie (with response by Campolo)

 

Connie Wieck – Our Missionary to China

Wayne City United Methodist Church was pleased to welcome Connie Wieck to our fellowship hall and sanctuary on Friday.  She taught us about her mission in China teaching English to Chinese college students and living as a Christian in a completely different culture.  We learned a lot from her presentation and enjoyed food and fellowship together.

God is busy at work in this world, and Connie has jumped on board with what God is doing.  Thanks be to God!

 

Carter in the Marion Daily Republican

Sorry that my niece’s face is right on the fold.

 

Prayer (The Ordinances of God, part 1)

Our next sermons in the “Season After Pentecost” Christian and Methodist Essentials series will be focused on the “Ordinances of God,” as outlined in Wesley’s General Rules of the Methodist Societies. This week’s sermon is about Prayer.

 

An Ordinary Time for an Extraordinary Church

This week we begin a new series of Christian and Methodist beliefs for the season after Pentecost (also known as “Ordinary Time”). Sunday’s text is Luke 7:36-8:3, and our focus will be “Forgiveness.”

 

Pastor Will gets Commissioned!

The big news for our church this week is that Pastor Will was commissioned as a Probationary Elder on Saturday. This is a big step toward full ordination in our denomination. Congratulations!

 

Hello Wayne City!

Hello and welcome to the new Weblog/Website for First United Methodist Church of Wayne City, IL.  I’m working hard to become an effective webminister so we can have an exciting, interactive site bringing the church’s online presence into the 21st century and beyond.  My plan is to have something new at least every week, so check back frequently.  God bless.