Ministry Moments: U2Charist

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Jun 13 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL
  • amf_u2charist


For those of you who didn’t know, I worked this year for my field placement at an Episcopal Church: Church of the Holy Nativity. It’s amazing how much change a small parish can make when they have around 110 people at worship on Sundays.

The U2Charist. These worship services have become a fad for Episcopal and Lutheran churches and we weren’t ashamed to try one for ourselves. The U2 catalogue contains the anthems that could make up hymnals for the faith of many Christians. Using them in worship seems as natural as using Psalms in prayer. Aimée (my boss) and I went to a different U2Charist service last spring and thought we could do one at CHN if we built up to it. We did it.

The evening was a MAJOR success. We had over 180 people and the attendees donated over $3000 for our two charities: Episcopal Relief and Development and Opportunity International.

U2Charists can happen successfully with little planning; but, as with all ministry, the more work that goes into them the more meaning can come out. How much planning did it take?
Aimée foreshadowed it to the church an entire year in advance. Back when I was just visiting the church as an attendee (but late enough we knew I’d be back this year as an intern), Aimée had the church dream up future special events they wanted to do. She planted the U2Charist and it stuck. At least two of the volunteers on the planning team had been mulling it over since that announcement!

But just giving a year’s advance warning wasn’t enough to help our congregation understand why we do a different worship service. The messages of many of the U2 songs have to marinate before people can draw the links for themselves between the mission they hear on Sundays, the music they listen to on Tuesdays, and the special worship experience we had on that Friday.

So we started the education process early; five months early, to be exact. Back in January, Terry Johnson and I led and organized the “Living into the Millennium Development Goals” adult education series. We split the goals for one every other week – with intro and final reflection sessions – so our congregation could command and conquer them in the full goal of eliminating the world’s extreme hunger and poverty — or at least know how we could try …

I was particularly proud of the reflection process we spurred in people at the beginning of the series. We handed out labels with statistics and reflection questions so people could put them on whatever they normally read and think about the goals at times beyond Sunday mornings. Think of it: have a magazine you peruse at the breakfast table but one author in there seems like he just tarnishes the luster of that literary gem? Well, cover it up with the stickers! Have those extra blank spaces on your refrigerator calendar just because the month didn’t end on the last day of the week? Well, cover them up with stickers!

The series lasted for five months. We tapped lay leaders to help lead sessions on most of the goals. For instance, one of our members who’s a leader at a Chicagoland literacy non-profit led our session on Universal Primary Education. One of our members who works at Argonne National Laboratory teamed up with another member who does landscaping to lead the session on Environmental sustainability. The training was happening, and the church was preparing itself for the worship service, and more importantly, what will happen after the worship service.

The plug-n-play team of eight members showed up when they could, took on responsibilities as they felt able, and pitched in to plan every detail of the event. They deliberated on meta-event questions, like “who should the money go to?” and “what are the resources in scripture and in the songs that are the backbone of the worship service?” They on micro-event questions, like “is there a way to move the first four rows of pews out so that people can sing and dance but everyone can still see the communion table?” and even better, “what should we do if we get too many people? Do we have overflow areas and ways to still include them?”

So our planning started with two requirements: 1) listening to recorded music could get lame and boring, so we needed a live cover band, and 2) the U2Charist would happen at the end of the spring at a date that worked for the cover band. Oh, and there was another blessing for the service – an offering had to be taken to support work on the MDGs (apparently this was part of the reason U2 let these services happen without charging royalties).

The cover band turned out to be GREAT. They called Elevation and they band members are from the Chicago and St. Louis areas. The lead singer, “Danno” (real name = Daniel) knows how to work a crowd and knows how to make the music fun. I was running the on-screen lyrics and graphics for the group and knew the songs well enough I didn’t need to look at the group continually, which turned out to be full of surprises, like when I looked up and Danno was at the top of the loft singing with the youth. Or like at the end when I looked up and he was in the middle of a conga line snaking its way around the sanctuary.

The night was capstoned in a comment I heard from one of CHN’s most energetic parishioners. She went up to Danno, and didn’t say, but shouted at him: “I don’t know a single one of these songs, but that was awesome! This is one of the most exciting nights of my life.”

And then she gave him a huge hug. But it turns out that it wasn’t the last time she would see the group. This was a Friday night, but then they were performing the following night at a nearby town’s Irish Pub and the next week they were performing at Navy Pier. She took her daughter and granddaughters and at the Navy Pier gig, Danno even called one of the granddaughters on stage to sing with him. The whole “epic” nature of it is kind of funny.

Oh, and I HAVE to mention why we had such great pictures for the event. One of my high school youth group members at CHN, Lucas, was willing to use my camera after I shoved it onto him. He did marvelously!

U2Charist Details

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Apr 7 1
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL
  • amf_u2charist

My weekend project: scratching my itch for creativity and designing the promotional postcards for CHN’s U2Charist in May.

U2Charist: Original of the Species

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Apr 6 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL
  • amf_u2charist

Hey all,

This week, the devotional uses the U2 song “Original of the Species,” which is also from U2’s recent (2004) album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. If you don’t already have the CD or song, here are two electronic outlets. Through iTunes (http://www.itunes.com), you can buy and download the track at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=29600302&id=29600233&s=143441. Or you can order the full CD through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Atomic-Bomb-U2/dp/B0006399FS/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1205248428&sr=8-1.

Original of the Species
What does it mean to be human? How would you teach a child what it means? Would you tell them they’ll screw up repeatedly in their lives and always need second chances, even though they don’t deserve them? Would you explain a lack of fairness to the world? Would you teach them how humanity is full of creativity and constantly going ‘beyond its own imagination?’ Would you explain that humanity is fully destructive – both physically and relationally? What’s your picture of humanity?

In fancy, technical language, this is called a theological anthropology. The best-known example of this is how people explain the lives of Adam and Eve in the beginning of Genesis. Created perfect and good, humanity somehow disobeyed and creation was no longer perfect. Some theologians stick to the story of Adam and Eve and argue about what can or can’t be done because of their actions. Some theologians venture to other pictures of human nature, such as in the first creation story in Genesis 1 where humanity is created in God’s image and given a different charge and purpose in life. Is humanity “Fallen” or “Blessed” or both? Are humans permanently disabled by sin or can sin be dismantled and washed away.

Needless to say: there’s no one picture of humanity constraining theologians. And Rock stars don’t have a standard either — which helps their songs give different pictures.

“Original of the Species” paints a picture from a parent’s perspective. Humanity isn’t distant or separated – it’s ironically independent, headstrong, and yet needlessly constrained (almost as if it has the potential to be so much more).

Bono wrote the lyrics to this song to the daughters of the band’s lead guitarist, The Edge. But it works just as well to imagine God blessing us like a parent with these words:

Baby slow down
The end is not as fun as the start
Please stay a child somewhere in your heart

I’ll give you everything you want
Except the thing that you want
You are the first one of your kind

But then, in the chorus, come lyrics that could be either Creator’s or created’s – words saturated with need and with reverence:

And you feel like no-one before
You steal right under my door
And I kneel, ’cause I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you’re not

And imagine: how would God bless humanity? What words could encourage to be more like we’re created to be? What words would we need to hear so we knew we could and should be the best versions of ourselves?

Everywhere you go you shout it
You don’t have to be shy about it, no
Come on now show your soul
You’ve been keeping your love under control

“Original of the Species” is a tribute song. Like all tributes, its words are laced with admiration. Like all tributes, it tries to redefine something’s worth so that it’s easier to see how valuable something is. What does it feel like to hear such a tribute song? Could God utter such tributes to humanity? Do we deserve them? Could we ever live into them? Take the time in the coming weeks to notice the theological anthropologies (pictures of human nature) inherent in the songs, objects, and other things you interact with. If you’re in doubt, think of any adjectives that describe humanity and the reasons those adjectives are used. There’s a theological anthropology in there somewhere. Here are some of the key phrases for noticing them:

weak, finite, fallen, compulsive, ‘only human,’ limited, destructive, ‘be more than you can be,’ strong, resilient, creative, resourceful

These words are extremes that we often mix and match when describing what it means to be human. “Come on now show your soul / You’ve been keeping your love under control.”

Other Resources
Here’s an interview Rolling Stone did with Bono back in 2005. The written article is at http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/8651280/bono But if you’re extra-curious with some time to listen to the man himself, they did audio recordings (available through iTunes for free at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=83282454)

Peace and Blessings,

Adam

U2Charist: Miracle Drug

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Mar 11 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL
  • amf_u2charist

I plan to do these weekly/bi-weekly devotionals using U2 songs as we lead up to the May 16th U2Charist. For this first week, we’re using the song Miracle Drug, the second track on U2’s recent (2004) album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. If you don’t already have the CD or song, here are two electronic outlets. Through iTunes, you can buy and download the track through the iTunes Store. Or you can order the full CD through Amazon.

Miracle Drug
When U2 came to Chicago in May 2005 on the Vertigo Tour, Bono introduced Miracle Drug by telling the story of how U2 fell in love with Chicago when they played in small bars 25 years ago. But Bono avoided resting in the nostalgia:

“We don’t really look back that much in our music. We don’t look at the past. The best bits of the past, we try to bring with us. There are songs – songs like Pride (in the Name of Love), songs like Sunday Bloody Sunday, songs like Where the Streets Have No Name. They’re the best bits of the past and we’ll take that with us. Because we’re interested, and we’re excited and we have faith in the future. That’s where we’re headed. So for a city of the future, this is our music. This is our … the thing that we’re strung out on. This is our drug. Miracle Drug.”

We all have these crutches that carry us into the future. Our families, our friends, our sometimes simple hope — we all have these touchstones that tell us who we are and why we work to change the world while we’re in it.

Miracle Drug is often lifted up as a “medical care anthem.” And indeed, it works for that. The bridge in the song has a surreal mixture of three voices singing different lyrics all at the same time.

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear a voice
It’s whispering
In science and in medicine
“I was a stranger
You took me in”

At the same time, “God I need …” and “Oh, yeah, ohhhhhhhh, yeaaaahhhhh” are layered on top of the soft, steady lyrics. Researchers, doctors, nurses, and all caretakers know these words in their hearts — it’s probably one of the most accurate voicings of their vocations. Their medical ministry reflects the care and persistence others have shown them in their lives. Even though Jesus didn’t mention that type of care in Matthew 25, it’s still that same hospitality that the doctors and nurses share.

But this song reflects a wider Christian truth as well. It acknowledges God’s ongoing revelation to the world. God didn’t stop speaking once the books of the Bible were set. Through the small miracles of medical breakthroughs to the bending of the long arc of history towards justice — Christians correctly pray for God’s knowledge to be ours. We don’t want to have to learn about God’s knowledge through narratives and recountings like we do in school and sermons. Such descriptions are imperfect. We want our knowledge to literally be God’s knowledge – with no intermediary.

I want to trip inside your head
Spend the day there …
To hear the things you haven’t said
And see what you might see

I want to hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape
And walk right out

H. Richard Niebuhr, a 20th century American theologian, wrote in The Meaning of Revelation, about God’s action and the way we relate to it:

We acknowledge revelation by no third person proposition, such as that there is a God, but only in the direct confession of the heart, “Thou art my God.” We can state the convincement given in the revelatory moment only in a prayer saying, “Our Father.” Revelation as the self-disclosure of the infinite person is realized in us only through the faith which is a personal act of commitment, of confidence and trust, not a belief about the nature of things. (p81)

We don’t have to be able to describe God’s thoughts or order for a perfect world in order to work toward it. We should want to, but we don’t have to be able to.

What is your miracle drug? How will the world be better by the time you leave? If you could see one thing through God’s eyes, what would it be?

Other Resources
Each week I’ll also include other resources. These will be videos such as excerpts for Bono’s speeches, documentaries led by Bono on the MDGs, or music videos from U2 and other artists.

This week, check out the video from Bono’s speech (sermon!) at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 2, 2006.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdrYDk8rVA]

MDG 1: Extreme Hunger and Poverty

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Feb 21 1
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

I swear: one of these adult education MDG sessions at Church of the Holy Nativity, I’M NOT GOING TO FORGET MY CAMERA!!! The scene is set for the perfect lifelong-learner shot: the lighting’s decent in the morning, the faces are bright and anxious. I just keep forgetting the second-most important piece of equipment. (The most important, after all, is the photographer’s brain — NOT the camera!).

This Sunday the Youth of the church led the session and taught about extreme poverty and hunger. They did a great job of mixing up the story (in a good way!) by alternating between their own reflections of post-hurricane work in New Orleans, the global and local stats on poverty, and testimonials and advertisements for their annual 30-hour famine. (They’re fasting on March 7th and 8th; it’s coming right up, CHN!)

Probably my biggest “wake-up!” moment in the session was Eve Lebaron’s description of Six Flags. She painted a verbal picture of the amusement park in New Orleans as an abandoned mess – the roller coasters have moss and grass growing on them. What a tragic image of the death of fun! But it illustrates the point: for the systematically hungry and impoverished, fun isn’t even an issue … it’s an impossibility.

Here are the labels for our journals. The first is an insert for the back inside cover (or wherever you choose to put it!) with some great ways to engage. Even though they’re mostly monetary options, they’re still great causes:

  • Episcopal Relief and Development – http://www.er-d.org – the Church’s outreach organization, focused on immediate disaster response and long-term sustainability.
  • World Community Grid – http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org – Donate your computer’s idle time to aid in socially-conscious scientific research.
  • End of Poverty book site – http://www.earth.columbia.edu/pages/endofpoverty/index/ – A website with research, practical tips, and a hopeful outlook on the future from Jeffery Sachs, an economic adviser to Kofi Annan in the formulation of the MDGs.
  • Kiva – http://www.kiva.org – A micro-lending network loaning money only to those poor enough; similar to the work of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank.


Millennium Development Goals

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Feb 4 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

I try not to admit this, but I “fly by the seat of my pants” more than I should. This morning I led the Adult Forum (adult education) with Terry Johnson at my church. We’re starting a three-month series on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. I didn’t know exactly what I’d say, but I knew Terry and I would have trouble limiting all we’d planned. The 45-minute session was way too short for the wealth of the MDGs … which is why we have nine more Sundays to work on them.

I didn’t know what I’d say, but I did know what we’d hand out. Our series is trying to make the MDGs practical and inescapable. We want to constantly be thinking of them and always have ways we can act (and think of new ways to act!). So we’re using journals. They’re a little low-tech — perhaps even a little old-fashioned — but these journals are great!

CHN has taught me the magic of labels. The parish forwent creating permanent name tags by using disposable, one-use address labels. People don’t have to worry about turning in their name tag before they leave or remembering to bring it back the following Sunday. They just stick a new label on each week. Well, the same logic works for our curriculum. We didn’t want to create content or worksheets or anything that was formulaic; none of those would have worked. People think, write, and reflect in different space. If their journals were to make an impact, the structure needed to be customizable. Enter the sticky labels.

We started with the cover. The bland non-dimensional images from Episcopal Relief and Development weren’t going to work. Last Thursday I wasted two hours as I held my head and hoped for Photoshop inspiration. (I’m sure it looked pretty funny to Bettie working in the office beside me). Then came this logo. 20 minutes later, I left CHN just after the last journal cover printed.

I love the logo: broken world; shadowed countries in the “2/3 world”; hopeful highlight below the borders. Hopefully the logo works. 😀

In addition to the cover, they each got “stickers” with the eight MDGs and these reflection questions:

More to come … and I’m excited. As Terry said at one point in the session: “Adam, they’re salivating!” Our congregation is so ready for this … !!!

When your Rector says something… think twice!

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Jan 30 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

In the euphoria of our engagement, I forgot to share the fun of my prior 24 hours: I chaperoned a Sr. High lock-in at my church. Lock-ins are, for the most part, second nature to me. They require little effort other than the ability to stay awake. That’s what I thought, at least, until Jessica mentioned something as we walked into the church before the youth arrived.
“Aimée said it’s OK if we tee-pee them tonight.”

I looked at her confused. I knew to tee-pee (or TP) someone’s house meant to throw toilet paper over their trees and house. But why, in the middle and coldest days of winter, would a youth group want to do such a thing? It turns out that when sponsoring the lock-in last year, Aimée had said it was OK for the youth to do this.

“How is this a good plan?” I kept asking myself before, during, and after the youth did the deed. (Imagine that from the voice of Jacopo in the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo). It seemed like it was too good to be true. It also seemed like it was non-essential to the youth. They didn’t care about it until Jessica reminded them of it.

In spite of all that, it was very fun. It turns out that all of the youth remaining for the whole night (some had to leave early for dentist appointments the following morning) were pretty good toilet paper throwers. They are excellent at lobbing light objects into the air for great distance. I had the sneaking suspicion while we were outside that Jessica’s prophecy would come true. In talking to the group earlier in the night, Jessica had mentioned, “I’d love to be arrested for contributing to juvenile delinquency.” She said it in the context of the charges against a woman in the civil rights protests whose kids were frequently protesting and getting arrested. I could just see it coming true for an event so less noble. The cops never showed up, however.

The night finished very smoothly. I ended up sleeping on a pew in the sanctuary with my pillow and a thick blanket I’d borrowed from Heidi. It was very comfortable until 6:45am when it seemed to drop 20 degrees inside. This was probably all in my imagination — but still, it was cold!

Aimée arrived for work the next morning and quickly let Jessica know that the youth needed to pick up all the toilet paper before they left if they ever wanted to do it again. I’d wondered if that would be the case, but it wasn’t one of the explicit factors in the offer to TP the house, so none of us had planned for it. We woke the kids up and all went out mid-morning to clean.

The funny thing when cleaning up toilet paper with youth: most of them aren’t that tall. They may have picked up 30% before it was all above their height. One of the trees had a low hanging branch and I jumped and pulled myself up enough that I could climb some other branches and dislodge the thin strands of tissue for the youth to collect on the ground. I felt like an ape that goes up a tree just to shake it and get the nuts to fall. After all of us braving the cold and doing very well at TP recovery we went inside and finished the lock-in. This was all part of the euphoria that preceded proposing to Heidi. But now I wonder: am I covered for worker’s comp. since I’m a volunteer and unpaid staff member? Hmm, who knows.

I’m not sure if there was an intended lesson for the youth? Were they supposed to realize that fun comes with a cost (in this case, just picking it up – they didn’t have to pay for the rolls)? Should they have thought twice about the costs to the environment? I’m not sure there was a pre-conceived lesson; hopefully in the future they will ask more questions — and grasp the larger implications — and then hopefully have just as much fun as they did that night. 😀

102

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Jan 28 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

I’m now up to 102 e-mails and Facebook messages congratulating Heidi and I on our engagement. And I haven’t responded to nearly enough of them! We each told our churches on Sunday, and it’ll no doubt be announced at DDH tonight, which include even more verbal congrats. It’s SO fun to have others recognize our relationship as Heidi and I have seen it for the past several months. :)

Also, while I’m thinking of it (and e-mailing my lay committee), here’s a sermon I preached at Church of the Holy Nativity on Sunday, January 20th, 2008. It was Epiphany II and the texts were: Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42. I preached on “leadership.”

Or you can download it here.

… it’s probably still there …?!

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Nov 21 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

Two days before the Thanksgiving holiday and I’m convinced that I’m loosing my mind. Actually, my mind is relatively secure; I’m mostly losing everything else. This afternoon I spent 90 minutes searching for my “to-do list” that covered everything I needed to do before December 15th. I could have re-created the list in 5 minutes … but that would have missed the point: I needed to find the index card and all its attached Post-it notes. Without them, I am aimless.

We’re doing a 4-week adult education series at Church of the Holy Nativity called “Setting Our Hearts: An Introduction to Sacred Community.” This evening’s session was on Authority and how we navigate life using sources of authority and influence (and yes, our parishioners saw a huge difference between “authority” and “influence” — maybe I’m too much of a Disciple … I definitely equate the two). We had people organize several sources: Christ, Mass Media, Nature, Law, Family, Bible, Church, Self, Clergy, Money, Education/Academy/Theologians. The end goal was to realize that there’s always a tension in our sources of authority and that it’s possible to have both individual autonomy and an external order. Because of this tension, diversity is to be expected and even encouraged. We don’t need to all have identical arrangements of our “bedrock foundations” in order to be a community together.

My still-forming thoughts on Authority:

“[Choosing who rules over you] offers finite coordinates for Christian existence. … In any case, to be very modest, this helps us to explain ambiguities or even tensions or even inconceivable opposites in Pauline theology.” This quote by Hans-Josef Klauck is precisely how we need to view authority (even though this isn’t exactly how he applied it when he lectured on the end of Romans 6:19-23). We face a paradox: how can our own human weakness fit with God’s plan of salvation?; we are unworthy and yet God still lets nothing separate us from Love. God can bless our lives even in our broken states. Authority, when healthy, offers the needed freedom with the proper limitations. Healthy authority gives us markers on our journey without creating walls that separate us from living authentically as ourselves; authority should never make us into people we don’t recognize. And yet, we can still hold opposites in tension with one another: we maintain our freedom while also submitting ourselves to God’s order.

So it was a rich night with some good reflection. But what led up to it showed me a new side of CHN that I’ve NEVER seen in a congregation. People at CHN leave things alone — literally — and this says something about their ecclesiology and how they view authority!Last Tuesday I brought a book for a parishioner. Marjorie Suchocki wrote an analysis of prayer from a ‘process theology’ perspective that I thought he’d reasonate with. I knew I’d left the book at church, but when Sunday came around, I couldn’t find it. So I told the parishioner that I’d bring it this Tuesday. After scouring my room (even after having no luck finding my to-do list), I still couldn’t find the book before I left to church.

I showed up at CHN this afternoon and Aimée saw me wandering lost in thought. “Did you lose something, Adam?” she asked. “Yeah, I thought I’d left a book here, but I can’t remember where I put it; I couldn’t find it in my room at home, so hopefully it’s still here somewhere.” “Check where you last left it; this congregation leaves things where they are.” she commented.Sure enough, I went upstairs to our fellowship hall and the book was sitting on top of the piano where I’d left it the last Tuesday. It was so bizarre to see a small part of the world unchanged. Even though over 150 people had gone through the room, the book hadn’t moved at any point. They didn’t move it to a “lost and found.” They didn’t discard it to a wasteful pile of trash. They simply left it.

Church of the Holy Nativity is full of people who don’t want to intrude. They expect the same from their authorities. I can’t imagine a worse situation than someone from the Diocese ordering them to do something … their response would probably resemble: “leave us alone, we’ll still show up when you need us!” Internal struggles as a community can remain on the shelf for years; they don’t go out of their way to resolve things until there’s a perceived urgency. My book could remain without interference until there was some more important use for that space. And yet, people will still gather around the Table in spite of each others’ shortcomings; they’ll go out of their way since they know that connection is necessary. Such a tension between passivity and active engagement is the church’s blessing and frustration.At least I know that if I’m looking for something at CHN … it’s probably still there!?!