I remember when I first encountered Facebook. I was a freshman at Eastern Mennonite University. I had just uttered goodbyes to all my friends from high school only to be reunited with them a few weeks later as my very first set of Facebook “friends.”

I did not imagine that creating my Facebook account would be something that I still live with a decade later.

No one imagined that Facebook would have 1.23 billion users worldwide a mere decade later either.[1]

But here we are: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and who-knows-what’s-next are with us to stay. Each of these social media platforms are a living entity, continually innovating themselves as they respond to the desires of users and a rapidly evolving online world culture. They offer unique services, but ultimately each is in service of connecting people. They provide a virtual space to share conversation, information, and images.

The rise of social media leads many to believe that increased communication and connection will result in a more empathetic and peaceful world. I am skeptical of this narrative, although Twitter has been immensely helpful in allowing youth to organize in protest of injustice in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Wall Street, and Ferguson, for example.

Some rejoice that social media platforms and increasingly user-friendly devices offer us an unprecedented opportunity to enter into deeper relationships with more people across greater distances. Others find it hard enough to just keep up with the people we see on a daily basis.

Overall, it’s probably wise to resist “salvific” narratives that suggest social media platforms will dramatically improve the world. It’s also equally wise to recognize the powerful gifts and opportunities that social media offer us as a vibrant community of faith.

Perhaps, we might think of social media as tools.

Tools are handy. They make achieving difficult tasks easier. They help talented carpenters to construct beautiful buildings. And when we admire those buildings, we don’t stand around in awe of saws, hammers, and screws.

I think of Facebook as a tool for inclusion and hospitality, a useful tool among others for helping congregations connect with one another to encounter the movement of God in our communities. That’s what’s truly beautiful.

Leaders working at the intersection of new technologies and Christian community engage with social media purely as a means, not an end.

One of those leaders is Kyle Matthew Oliver, who is employed as a “digital missioner” at a large Protestant seminary. Oliver puts forward the idea that social media and other web-based tools, like podcasts of worship services, can help congregations reach folks that are typically under-served in our communities.[2] For Oliver these include:

✧ People who work anything but a 9-5 workday Monday through Friday,

✧ people who can’t always provide or afford childcare or transportation,

✧ people with physical disabilities or special learning needs not well accommodated by aging church buildings or noisy groups,

✧ people who are new to the faith and not ready to prioritize faith learning, and

✧ people whose lives are over-structured as it is, and who have the courage to recognize that attending one more meeting or class right now will create more spiritual chaos than the meeting or class has any hope of redeeming at present.

Engaging with social media as a congregation enhances our ability to provide hospitality and connection to more people, especially those who are not served by the traditional Sunday morning gathering time – like those doing service at a long distance, or those in our wider fellowship who are no longer able to attend on Sundays, but long to connect to this place that they have grown to love.

In his work Understanding Media Marshall McLuhan famously introduced the phrase “the medium is the message.” McLuhan understood that the message produced by a particular medium is solely an effect of the medium. New mediums generate the possibility for new effects, new messages. Put differently, the best way to communicate a new message is to find a new medium.

As a congregation, we are not seeking to put forward a brand new message, but might we be interested in tools – mediums – that allow us to express an old message in a new way?

At the center of our mission statement is our calling to: “Unite in the worship and praise of God; stimulate Christian growth and discipleship; provide opportunities for fellowship, sharing and support among members; engage in service and outreach; practice hospitality; and invite others to faith.”

These are the longstanding values that have formed the mission and message of the congregation from the beginning. As new technologies emerge, we are faced with the challenge of translating our longstanding mission and message into contexts increasing awash in digital culture. Amidst this reality, we ought to continually discern what use these mediums might be as tools in our work to spread this message and pursue this mission.

Facebook is easy to navigate and helpful as a tool to explore how social media platforms might allow us to communicate our mission and message in a new way and, potentially, to new people.

But the first value stated is that we “unite in the worship and praise of God” and this is something holy that occurs in the visible, enfleshed presence of one another and God. This is beautiful and it can’t happen online, but we should probably share about it on Facebook.

[1] http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2014/01/29/facebook-passes-1-23-billion-monthly-active-users-945-million-mobile-users-757-million-daily-users/

[2] http://www.faithformationlearningexchange.net/uploads/5/2/4/6/5246709/the_virtues_of_online_learning.pdf, page 2.

– John Tyson

To read previous columns, click on “Pastor’s Post” below and then scroll down:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Campus ministries at Bethel College recently sponsored a 24 Hour Prayer vigil, inviting members of the college community to sign up to pray for blocks of time beginning 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, and ending 6:00 p.m. on Sunday. The prayer vigil took place at the Agape Center in the Richert House, just across the street from BCMC.

In advance of 24 Hour Prayer, student chaplain Ben Kreider offered some reflections about prayer in a chapel service. “By intentionally praying around the clock as a community for a full day we hope to discover the ways in which we can pray ceaselessly at all times,” he said. “When the word prayer is mentioned, a lot of thoughts or feelings may surface. We may feel awkward or uncomfortable with prayer. We may feel guilty about how little we pray. We may not know what prayer is. We may experience prayer as stagnant, as simply a conversation in our head. I don’t have a nice definition of prayer all worked out but some possibilities of what it can be. Prayer can be taking off our shoes and declaring the ground under our feet to be holy. Prayer can be crying in pain and lament to God. Prayer can be sitting in silence and waiting for God. Prayer can be an explosion of holy creativity manifest in art and song. Prayer can be the words of familiar Psalms and hymns when we have no words of our own. Prayer can be free-form, spontaneous, and spirit-filled. Prayer can be a simple posture of gratitude and hope.” Ben concluded with his hopes for the 24 Hour Prayer vigil: “I hope that we come to know prayer as something life-giving, a way to connect with our Creator. I hope that prayer can begin where we honestly are, with all our worries and foibles and questions, and find its end in the peace and the love of God who is always listening and present.”

I participated in 24 Hour Prayer early Sunday morning. Student chaplains had set up different forms of prayer for participants to engage in: Lighting candles along with prayer requests written by students at the chapel service earlier in the week, scripture, written prayer guides, music, devotional images to meditate on in silence, and visual art. 

I was grateful for this time and space in which to slow down, become mindful of God, and to join the flow of prayer and the community of pray-ers who came and went during that 24 hours. As I arrived for my hour of prayer and entered the Agape Center, I noticed that the person who I was replacing had left their shoes by the door: A sign of holy ground. I too removed my shoes, just as Moses had removed his sandals before the presence of God in the burning bush. Any place is holy ground when we recognize that God is there, and open ourselves to be present to God.

I began my prayers that morning by reading from the classic devotional book, A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie, with prayers for morning and evening of each day of the month. Here is a portion of the morning prayer for the 9th day of the month, which wonderfully expresses both the mystery and mandate of prayer:

Here I am, O God, of little power and of mean estate, yet lifting up heart and voice to Thee before whom all created things are as dust and a vapour. Thou art hidden behind the curtain of sense, incomprehensible in Thy greatness, mysterious in Thine almighty power; yet here I speak with Thee familiarly as child to parent, as friend to friend. If I could not thus speak to Thee, then were I indeed with out hope in the world… Dear Father, take this day’s life into Thine own keeping. Control all my thoughts and feelings. Direct all my energies. Instruct my mind. Sustain my will. Take my hands and make them skilful to serve Thee.   Take my feet and make them swift to do Thy bidding. Take my eyes and keep them fixed upon Thine everlasting beauty. Take my mouth and make it eloquent in testimony to Thy love. Make this day a day of obedience, a day of spiritual joy and peace. Make this day’s work a little part of the work of the Kingdom of my Lord Christ, in whose name these my prayers are said. Amen.

May it be so – on this day, tomorrow, and every 24 hours…

– Heidi Regier Kreider

To read previous columns, click on “Pastor’s Post” below and then scroll down:

In her book Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, my seminary professor Kenda Creasy Dean argues that the largest predictor for the quality of faith in a teenager and young adult depends on the quality of faith of the significant adults in their lives.

Dean also suggests that the most important thing about these relationships is that they last well into the years that immediately follow graduation from high school.

At BCMC, we seek to provide students from grades 7 to 12 with a mentor that will help them navigate their emerging Christian faith, values, and goals in the context of our pluralistic culture. In these relationships, youth have an opportunity to develop a significant adult relationship that serves to compliment their existing relationships with parents.

The mentoring program is one of the foremost ways that BCMC practices being a truly intergenerational community. Mentors often spend time helping youth learn how to drive, bake, or play music. Mentor pairs rotate in taking care of children in the nursery during worship services. Mentors often can be spotted at sporting events or concerts supporting their mentees.

The mentoring program is also one of the foremost ways that we practice stewardship. By being stewards for the lives of youth – being with them through years that can be profoundly disorienting – we are caring for and valuing the most important gifts that God has graciously given us.

BCMC youth are all young people currently developing skills for leadership in the diverse activities that they engage in on a weekly basis. Someday soon, they will be sent out and scattered into the world as agents of God’s love. For now, as our mentors know, the mentoring program is one way that BCMC sends God’s love to them.

– John Tyson

To read previous columns, click on “Pastor’s Post” below and then scroll down:

“Healing Connections: Land, People, Spirit” was the theme of the Fall Festival worship service at BCMC on Oct. 19.  It considers the call to restore right relationships with the land, with other human beings, and with God, as essential to peace and wholeness in the world.

I have pondered these connections more after attending the annual Prairie Festival at the Land Institute near Salina, KS, in September. The Land Institute is a non-profit research and education institution seeking to develop an agricultural system “with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield to that comparable from annual crops” – in other words, a system of food production and consumption that is environmentally sustainable. The Land Institute mission statement says it well: “When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, the Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.”

The recent Prairie Festival focused specifically on ethical, religious and spiritual foundations for agricultural and ecological sustainability.   Speakers inspired and informed us from the perspectives of biblical scholarship, philosophy, faith, and science. They provoked us to reexamine our beliefs, commitments and lifestyles in relation to the ecological disaster that human beings have created through modern agricultural and economic practices. I was struck again with the importance of making connections between environmental, social and spiritual realities. The answer to the current ecological crisis essentially lies not only in technological solutions, but in a renewed commitment to live in covenant relationship with earth, other human beings, and the Source of all being.

The Prairie Festival gave us opportunity to experience these connections in tangible ways. Demonstration plot tours showed progress in developing perennial crops. The local-foods dinner menu featured bison stew and bread made with flour from Kernza a perennial wheatgrass grain developed at the Land Institute. Music and art cultivated our spirits through songs and images of lament, hope, and beauty. Interactions with a variety of people nurtured relationships that opened new insights, perspectives and possibilities for positive change in the world.

For me, several connections at the Prairie Festival were especially meaningful.

During the break between afternoon lectures and dinner, I visited with my former seminary professor, Ellen Davis, who now teaches at Duke Divinity School. As one of the featured presenters, she spoke about Biblical foundations for earth-care. She noted that the Hebrew scriptures are rooted in a culture of farmers, while also reflecting issues of economic and political power similar to our contemporary world. It was great to catch up with Ellen, and to share memories of the Hebrew class I took from her. I am currently reading her book Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible.

For dinner I joined a picnic table of college students. They had traveled all the way from St. Catherine College in Kentucky to attend the Prairie Festival.   I met one of the students – a freshman from Kinshasa, Congo – while standing in the meal serving line. Her name tag caught my attention, since I had lived in Congo as a missionary child years ago. She invited me to join her and her colleagues – a faculty member, and students from Uganda, Burkina Faso, India, and several U.S. locations. They explained that they were all studying sustainable farming and ecological agrarianism through the Berry Farming Program at St. Catharine College, founded recently on the lifework of activist, farmer, and writer Wendell Berry.  As the St. Catharine College website says: “For more than fifty years, Berry has been a leading voice in the sustainable foods and farms movement – nationally and internationally.  In fiction, poetry, and essays, he urges readers to support small family farms and to use nature as measure in cultivation and land-use practices.  To meet the urgent need for bolstering rural communities, small farm production, and local markets, Wendell’s daughter Mary Berry Smith, Executive Director of The Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, sought a college with which the Berry family could further its commitment to improving farming through education.  St. Catharine College proved an ideal fit because of its devotion to land stewardship and community engagement.” Wendell Berry has been a longtime friend of the Land Institute, and these students were excited to finally visit this special place in the middle of Kansas! I was equally inspired by their passion for living responsibly and creatively on the earth.

As we make healing connections with the land, people and God, may we too experience God’s shalom.

– Heidi Regier Kreider

To read previous columns, click on “Pastor’s Post” below and then scroll down:

The CROP Walk for hunger relief has been a part of my life for many years in the different communities in which I have lived.  I walked the CROP Walk vigorously as a young adult, trudged a shortened version of the CROP Walk as a pregnant mom-to-be, pushed an infant all the way in a stroller, walked hand-in-hand with dawdling young children, picked up the pace to keep up with teenagers, and – in recent years – pressed on in spite of aching joints and sore muscles .  At our local CROP Walk on September 28, I will take a break from walking, and instead join another pastor from the local community to staff one of the stations along the way.  I look forward to offering a cup of cold water and a snack to walkers as they go past!  Whether we walk, sponsor a walker with our financial contributions, or find other ways to serve the hungry and thirsty, may we always hunger for justice and thirst for righteousness.

Here is a hymn of dedication by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette for those participating in CROP Hunger Walks:

O God, you send us out to walk,
For faith is more than idle talk;
It’s more than saying, “Be well fed!”
When others don’t have daily bread.

We walk with joyful, eager feet
So others will have food to eat.
We staff the checkpoints, offer rest,
And serve you, Lord, for we’ve been blessed.

When we grow weary, may we know
That some must walk where’er they go.
For water, food, or work to do,
They walk till they grow weary, too.

O Lord, we walk in safety here
And know that others walk in fear.
They flee oppression, flood or war;
Each fear-filled day, they walk some more.

Not all here walk with strength or speed
But all can give to those in need.
And as we serve you, may we know
You walk with us where’er we go.

The fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO – and the protests that have erupted following that tragedy – have again triggered a much-needed national conversation about the realities of racism and  poverty in communities across the United States.  Recently I was pondering news reports about these issues, as I drove my car around town doing errands.  I happened to pop in a CD by Sweet Honey in the Rock, an African-American women’s a cappella singing group.  The first song caught my attention as an eloquent commentary on the violence in our nation: 

Ella’s Song – Lyrics by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Refrain:

We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

Verses:

Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons
Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons

And that which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me

To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail
And if I can shed some light as they carry us through the gale

The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hand of the young who dare to run against the storm

Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
I need to be just one in the number as we stand against tyranny

Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot I come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survive

I’m a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
At time I can be quite difficult, I’ll bow to no man’s word

I pray that out of the anger and despair boiling in places like Ferguson, the voices of truth may rise to help our nation hear and respond in ways that bring true justice and healing.

Heidi Regier Kreider

This summer, worship services at BCMC have focused on readings from the book of Genesis: Stories of Biblical characters such as Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Esau, Jacob (who later came to be called Israel), Rachel, Leah, Joseph and other descendents of Jacob.   This multi-generational family narrative is the story of God calling the people of Israel to be a covenant community who will be the vehicle of God’s blessing to all people in the world.   At the same time, these peoples’ lives were also filled with conflict, danger, deceit and dysfunction.  Some of the stories are quite disturbing, raising questions about how human beings perceive God’s presence and interpret God’s will. They invite us to wonder about how human choice intertwines with divine purpose.

These ancient family stories have echoed in my mind, as I have joined my relatives for several of our own extended family reunions this summer.  As reunions often do, our gatherings include telling stories about our common ancestors, showing pictures, and reviewing family genealogy.   In the process we discover that – like the characters of Biblical history – the members of our families are far from perfect.  In the telling of our stories, we cannot help but notice brokenness, imperfections, flaws and foibles.  We observe the wounds of division, hostilities and conflict that leave their mark from one generation to another.  Yet, like the ancient people of Israel, our family stories also reveal the faithfulness of God working through – and in spite of – our human choices and events beyond our control.  God chooses to use ordinary people to carry out God’s purposes in the world.

In Jacob’s dream, God told him: “…your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring…”

May our families – scattered as they are, imperfect as they are – also be the relationships through which we experience God’s faithfulness, seek to be faithful to God, and become a blessing to the world around us.

In my last pastor’s post, I wrote about a recent vacation trip my husband and I took to Alaska.  I described the beauty of God’s creation that we saw:  Mountains, ocean, glaciers, forests, lakes, rivers, icebergs, and wildlife. And I mentioned visiting our son who has lived in Anchorage the past year, serving with Service Adventure through Mennonite Mission Network.

So, this post is “Alaska – Part II.”  Our vacation in Alaska occurred at the beginning of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament, which just concluded.  Being avid soccer fans, we were on a constant quest in Alaska to find venues to watch soccer games – places that had a TV, got the required TV station, and would turn it on for us.   Seeking soccer-watching venues  is often a feature of our family summer vacations, since the World Cup occurs in summer.  For example, I remember the time we stopped to watch a game in a restaurant in Pueblo, CO, on the way back from time in the mountains.  Our waiter was annoyed because he would rather have been watching baseball or golf on another TV station.  And there was the time a group of us stopped during the Bike Across Kansas to see a game in a hotel in Baldwin City, KS.

Well, it was no different in Alaska – except the venues were more exotic and the food more expensive.  In Anchorage, we watched games and ate burritos in the Los Arcos Mexican Resturant, hamburgers at the Peanut Farm sports bar and grill, pizza at the Firetap Alehouse, and blackened halibut tacos at the Beartooth Theater and Grill.  Then there was Thorn’s Lounge down in Seward on the Kenai Peninsula along the gulf of Alaska, where we ate cheesecake and apple pie; and Mike’s Palace in Valdez, where a friendly waitress ushered us back to a separate room with large screen TV all to ourselves, ate Greek salads and watched end-of-the day highlights of the U.S. victory over Ghana.

The next morning, after we had cleaned up our tents from camping in the rain, we came back into Valdez looking for a warm spot to have lunch and watch Brazil vs. Mexico.  First we stopped at Ernesto’s Mexican Restaurant, thinking surely they’d be showing the game.  But no, they were not even aware of it. So we ended up instead at the Fat Mermaid restaurant, where a waitress cheerfully sat us down at a table right in front of the TV, and enjoyed clam chowder (fitting for a harbor town) and chips and salsa (to honor the Latin American teams playing).

So, why should a pastor tell about her family’s obsession with soccer? Well, there are some parallels to church life.  Watching World Cup soccer connects us to something beyond ourselves – a global community that is quickly recognized when kindred spirits meet one another.  At the Peanut Farm in Anchorage, we had just come in and been seated to watch the Netherlands vs. Spain game, decked out in orange t-shirts in loyalty to our favored team – the Dutch.  Then, in walked a group of Dutch tourists, all wearing orange, carrying orange hats and an orange banner.   Upon seeing our orange attire, they heartily greeted us and said, “You are one of us – come be part of our group!”  They rearranged tables and chairs so we could all sit together, and they proudly hung the banner on the table in front of us.  Instant camaraderie!  Soon, a larger group of soccer fans had assembled, some cheering for Spain, some cheering for Netherlands, but all sharing the spirit of fun, good-natured debated over the referee’s calls, and the drama of the game.

Hospitality was another aspect of our soccer-watching.  Besides the open arms of fellow tourists, and the friendly welcome at the Fat Mermaid, there was the waitress at Thorn’s lounge in Seward who – after we’d already been nibbling our cheesecake and pie and sipping coffee for a good hour said, “You must be real soccer fans – you have been watching that screen the whole time!  Don’t worry, just put up your feet and make yourselves at home. Stay as long as you want!”  (We made sure to tip generously.)

Of course, I do not presume to persuade everyone to become soccer enthusiasts, nor do I assume World Cup soccer is without its flaws.  I would also not suggest that spending hours in front of TV screens eating hamburgers, nachos and cheesecake should be habitual activity.

But I do hope we in the church can take some lessons from World Cup soccer players and fans. I hope that we can exhibit the same level of enthusiasm for teamwork and goals.  I hope that we can take as seriously the training, equipping and effort that are required for faithfulness and some measure of success.  I hope that we can embrace with similar eagerness the reality that we are not an isolated group unto ourselves, but are part of a wide community of people who share common loyalty and purpose.  And I hope that we too will go out of our way to be welcoming and hospitable to those who come out of the cold and rain and travels of life to seek shelter, food, drink, and the joy of sharing it with others.

May God grant us energy and enthusiasm to join God’s work in the world.  May we have open hearts, minds and arms to embrace sisters and brothers in our own congregation, to love our neighbors in the community, and to seek the welfare of strangers and opponents in the wider world.  May we strain to watch God’s game – to catch sight of God’s Spirit on the move, to cheer the good news of God’s grace, to lament the losses and encourage the hopes of others, and to keep in view the purpose toward which God calls us.   G….o…..a….l !!

– adapted from a devotional presented by Heidi Regier Kreider at BCMC Church Board.