I am grateful for being given the opportunity for organizing, recruiting, and leading this year’s membership classes. My participation in this will be completed by the time you receive this newsletter. I have greatly appreciated pastors Kathryn and Chris Whitacre’s participation with me. They attended, providing an ongoing pastoral relationship and as mentors requested by two separate students. As I am only temporary their presence facilitated baptismal relationships that extend beyond the completion of my tenure as interim pastor.

There were 5 youth who completed the class and two others who attended some of the sessions. Each youth selected a mentor to attend all sessions with them. These teams also had weekly assignments that required meeting together between sessions. The design, which I believe was successfully accomplished, was to facilitate the development of a faith relationship between student and mentor which could offer meaning and support to both the student and the mentor as they continue their Christian journey into the future. I was pleasantly pleased to observe student/mentor relationships develop during the time span of the class. Persons expressed real satisfaction and joy as the class went along. It appeared to me that all, including students and mentors, became deeply engaged in the process.

The week-to-week experience with the class was very satisfying for me. Before starting I didn’t know if this old man could do something that would catch the imagination of young people as they considered such topics as the Bible, church history, God, faith, Brethren values and beliefs, Church of the Brethren heritage and history, and what it means to be a Christian. With the engagement of mentors I believe we had a successful learning experience together. Not only that, I believe we had fun.

The class for older persons turned out to be smaller with several persons having major scheduling conflicts with the time we attempted to meet. We used the same outline of topics used with the youth. The class forum became an opportunity for me to meet individually or in small numbers with persons. This allowed for deep intimate sharing about faith and membership issues that persons are actually dealing with. For me this was exciting and satisfying. I believe participants found it meaningful as well.

Chris and Kathryn will pursue membership and baptism with all participants. The actual celebration event will be Palm Sunday, April 1. If you did not earlier receive the invitation to participate, and if you have an interest in giving your life to Christ, being baptized, and/or in joining our fellowship, please contact one of us pastors at your earliest convenience.

Thank you, McPherson Church of the Brethren, for calling me to facilitate Christ’s invitation to persons to enter into discipleship and membership with our Christian fellowship. This opportunity has offered meaning and fulfillment to me as I continue my faith journey.

Shalom,
Ken Holderread

Measuring Day

The 21st of every month is measuring day at our house. Measuring Day is the time of the month when all our family backs up to the wall and takes stock of our growth – how much did the kids grow and how much did Mom and Dad shrink.

The wall is covered with pencil marks and smudges – lines and numbers indicating the changes in growth from month to month and year to year. Our measuring wall includes members of our immediate and extended family. While we do not get a monthly measure of our extended family, we certainly grab the measurement when they are visiting.

Measurements on our wall range from our children’s earliest beginnings – when our children could stand and stand still long enough to get something close to an accurate reading to six feet eleven inches – and still growing.

It’s been fun over the course of the years to have a regular measuring day. It becomes also a clear marker of the passage of time. The kids are not only growing taller, but older – older – as are Kathryn and I.

The notion of measuring day also translates to our faith journey. In the Church of the Brethren, one of our significant measuring days is Maundy Thursday of Holy week – a time when we take stock of our spiritual life and relationship to God and our faith community.

My hope and prayer is that spiritual measuring can occur every day of our lives rather than one or two special occasions we set aside as part of our faith tradition. To take stock of our spiritual well-being along with measured awareness of our faith journey keeps us ever closer in relationship to God and perhaps in deeper more meaningful relationship with those around us who are also on the journey of faith.

On Monday, February 20, in a service of remembering, we celebrated the life of Arlene Kough in our sanctuary. Included in the worship folder were words penned by Mary Stewart. These words were meaningful to Arlene in her life and living. I share them here as one way to provide the means to measure how we are doing on our faith walk and perhaps a way to measure the condition of our own spiritual wellness.

Collect

“Keep us, O God, from pettiness; let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.

Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off self-seeking.

May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face—

without self-pity and without prejudice.

May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous.

Let us take time for all things, make us grow calm, serene, gentle.

Teach us to put into action our better impulses,

straight-forward and unafraid.

Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences;

that in the big things of life we are as one.

And may we strive to touch and to know the great common human heart of us all, and, oh, Lord God, let us forget not to be kind.”

May God’s blessings be yours as you take stock of your own spiritual journey on measuring day.

Chris Whitacre, Minister of Pastoral Care

In my interim pastoral role I have been assigned the responsibility to organize our congregation’s invitation to persons into membership and discipleship. In assessing our situation I find three groups who may want to consider our invitation.

1. There is a group of persons (particularly teenagers) who are having their first opportunity to accept Christ and to become a member of our congregation. For these persons we hope to offer the opportunity to:

• Attend weekly discipleship/membership classes after Sunday worship starting February 12 from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m.  Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch.
• Choose a person older than you who is a church member who will assist/mentor you during your learning experience and attend the weekly classes with you.
• Consider being baptized Easter morning, April 8.
• Attend Love Feast Maundy Thursday evening.

2. There is a sizable group of persons who have joyfully participated in our fellowship, either long or short-term, and have not yet officially become members but are perhaps wishing to explore being baptized or joining. For these persons I would like to call a meeting at 7 p.m. Sunday, February 12, in the Community Room to explore interest and options to care for this.

3. Those who are in neither group 1 or 2 are another important group in this process. What does your baptism mean to you? Is there something about it that makes you want to encourage others to be baptized? You and I together have a joint responsibility to call others into baptism as disciples and members into our body of Christ. Talk to others, share your faith, and offer your encouragement to persons who might benefit from this as you have. Encourage participation in the opportunities listed above. Share their names and interest with your pastoral team. Consider your own participation as an encouragement to others and for your own benefit. Last year I was invited to participate in the membership class as a mentor for my granddaughter. I think she benefitted by attending, but wow! So did I! What will it be like if we end up having to deal with more participants than for what we are prepared?

Stay tuned for more information about this. Feel free to talk about it with your youth leader or Sunday school teacher, your deacons, or one of the pastors.
Ken Holderread

Most of the Christian year we may differ in our preference for the kind of hymns we sing and the style of music we use in worship but when it comes to Christmas, members ask to hear and sing the ‘traditional’ Christmas hymns.

Music engages our emotions, awakens our memories and feeds our souls.

“There’s a Song in the Air! There’s a star in the sky! There’s a mother’s deep prayer And a baby’s low cry!”

This is a Christmas hymn I grew up singing.

I can’t read the words without singing the words. All of my senses respond to this hymn.

I remember the face and name of the pianist/organist who played for every service at my home congregation (Helen Casten). I taste the peanut butter ball rice krispie cookies my adopted grand-ma (Minnie Lengel) brought to the cookie and punch fellowship after the Christmas Eve service every year. I smell burnt dust as the heat rises out of the 4 X 4 floor grate over the boiler that heated the sanctuary. I see the nativity cradle and the fake baby Jesus doll we used year after year after year.

The story of God’s miraculous gift, of the WORD made flesh in baby Jesus, is seared in my memory through the words and melody of a Christmas hymn. “And the star rains its fire while the beautiful sing. For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King.”

Small children easily sing along with the words and tune to the first verse of many Christmas hymns. Older people, nearing the end of their lives, seemingly unresponsive to other stimuli suddenly join in with the tune and words to Christmas hymns.

Imbedded in Christmas Hymns is the amazing and miraculous story of Gods love that was so great it came to us in human form.

God calls us to share this Good News and go tell it on the mountain. The Good News came upon a midnight clear, away in a manger where to us a child of hope is born. The virgin Mary had a baby boy and love came down at Christmas, while shepherds watched and hark, the herald angels sing. So oh how joyfully after this silent night, holy night – on this day earth shall ring, in fact I heard the bells on Christmas Day. So come little children, come all ye faithful – good Christian friends rejoice because in the little town of Bethlehem – what child is this? – the long-expected Jesus!

Kathryn Whitacre, Dec/Jan 2011/12

Since August I’ve been leapfrogging between three different books and finally finished all of them this week; “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” by Rhoda Janzen, “Putting Away Childish Things” by Marcus J. Borg and “LEFT neglected” by Lisa Genova. In these books, although widely divergent, I followed a life-journey theme beginning with my roots, morphing into my present and concluding in my future.

Considering my roots and history as a member of the Church of the Brethren, “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” left my spouse and I, at some points, lying in bed late at night with tears of laughter rolling down our faces and at other points soberly considering the sometimes unhealthy, narrow minded, just plain odd perspectives of our own Anabaptist heritage. As schizophrenic as my Brethren identity can make me it is also true, as the author claims at the end of her memoir on her own Mennonite roots, that “…..as gentle as a hand on the small of the back, nudging me forward — the sound of my heritage, my future [is calling].”

Considering my current spiritual journey with all its twists and turns, ups and downs, “Putting Away Childish Things” gave my experience a voice, allowing me to vicariously live through characters thinking, feeling and reacting to religion, philosophy, theology, Christianity – in ways not dissimilar to my own. And when it’s all said and done the truth is that it’s never said and done and God is mysterious enough, awesome enough and just plain God enough to handle any road I take or cross-roads I consider.

Considering where I go from here, “LEFT neglected” reminded me that my perspective is probably incomplete, life as I know it is far more tenuous than I’d like to admit and there are pieces in motion that I can’t even begin to comprehend in this grand adventure we call life. It’s important everyday to embrace and celebrate and give thanks wherever, whenever and for whatever we can.

So now I’ve got a grip on where I’ve come from, what I’m doing and where I’m going. Well….. at least for a few sweet moments I was able to live with that myth! Last night I started a book from my “books everyone SHOULD have read” list. It’ll be interesting to see how God pops up in “The Cider House Rules”!

Kathryn