A Message from Rev'd Ben

A Church community exists first to worship God. Not to worship God so that we can then get on with the useful work, as though praise were the warm-up and the committees were the main event. Worship is the main event. Everything else we do — teaching our children, feeding our neighbors, sitting with one another over a cup of coffee — grows out of that center, or slowly withers away from it.

The oldest description we have of a Sunday morning makes the point better than I can. Around the year 155, Justin Martyr wrote to a Roman emperor explaining what Christians actually did when they gathered. They read the prophets and the apostles. They heard a sermon. They prayed. They shared bread and wine. And then, in the same breath, without changing the subject, he mentions the collection left with the presider for orphans and widows, for the sick, the imprisoned, the stranger. Care for the poor was not a separate department with its own meeting. It sat inside the liturgy, because that is where it came from.

Acts tells the same story. The first Christians devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Then they held things in common. Then they gave to whoever had need. Then they grew. The praise came first, and everything else came after it, the way fruit comes after a root.

And slowly, over time and repetition, we are formed into the body of Christ – the Church.

A family becomes a family at the same table, week after week, in ordinary repetition. So it is with a Church. The Sunday that forms us most profoundly is almost never the one you could have predicted, which is a good argument for being present on the ordinary ones.

So: September 13. One service, at 10:00 a.m.

The whole parish together, with the choir back to lead us. Afterward, a picnic on the grounds and a ministry fair with tables for family ministry, outreach, fellowship, music, and more. The Sunday following, we resume our usual rhythm — two services and a newly minted formation hour coinciding with coffee hour — and that rhythm, not the picnic, is the real beginning.

Gratefully yours,

Rev’d Ben