In an economic climate where Christian education positions are being eliminated in many congregations, educators continue to join NAECED—now more than 350 dues-paying members— for the empowering mixture of fellowship, continuing education and resource-sharing.
Church of the Incarnation, Manhattan, began its camp in 1886 as a way to provide a “fresh air” respite for the city’s immigrants, many of them Armenian . . . The camp was an outreach of the Chapel of the Incarnation, now called Church of the Good Shepherd and located on 31st Street.
David Adams offers a painful and incisive indictment: Jesus would not have been a Christian. No way, no how.
In addition to exposing our children to cultural and spiritual events like Kwanzaa, my wife and I will probably also baptize them. If the road toward embracing a truly open and multicultural spirituality is to root one’s self in a particular tradition, I can think of no better role model than Jesus to help guide our children.
Here’s a possible vision for the future of Sunday School, when dwindling supplies of money and people may force churches to push their resources together.
I find interesting the process of creativity, of how each person sets a vision and pursues it, in light of the demands (the “secret ingredient” or the special client), the limitations (of time and resources), and the qualifications of the judges.
A church which welcomes those who identify themselves as doubters is called to be a place of risk and venture in which the actual experience of questioning is explored with candor and even rigor. A community content to vaguely affirm people where they are and leave their issues unexamined and unchallenged would be just as spiritually inauthentic as a complacently orthodox community.
The Zen master talked for a long while to Tammy in Japanese, then brought out a long wooden stick. “He is going to walk up and down and watch you,” Tammy announced. “If you want you can bow to him” — she showed us how, head down and palms together — “to tell him that if he sees you are not sitting up straight or concentrating, you would like him to hit you.”
The good news is that they are hungry for deeper faith, and thrilled for whatever opportunities the church offers them to learn and to lead. The other news is that their home congregations have done nothing to “support them in their life in Christ” since they were confirmed, and very rarely do anything to help them connect with a faith community when they leave home.
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury, Vermont was and is a vibrant church in a small college town where the Christmas pageant was a big deal. The pageant had the whole cast, from Mary to the wise men, to scads of shepherds to angels, to scores of sheep, to a donkey and a cow. The pageant was fun for kids, and was (as I now appreciate) a ton of work for the adults in the church, and was a set- up for all kinds of chaos.