Dear Friends,
The Sunday after Christmas, the latest high-profile shooting in a church ended when the shooter was stopped—by a well-trained, armed parishioner carrying a legally concealed weapon.
It’s a peculiar kind of contrast, isn’t it – the image of God made flesh in the form of a helpless infant, drawing us together to worship. Then, the image of a broken man with a gun wreaking violence in a house of faith, himself killed by another man with a gun in that sacred space, as we remember the story of God’s vulnerability in Jesus, and the violence he escaped by fleeing to Egypt.
The cognitive dissonance of violence in a place called a sanctuary is part of the story of the way of Jesus – and a kind of icon for us. That icon, the child in the creche, the child fleeing with his parents, asks us who we want to be in the face of violence as followers of the way of Jesus.
In the wake of a rise in anti-Semitic violence and hate crimes, faith communities of all kinds – Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and more – across the United States are thinking and talking about safety in new ways. Episcopalians have long staked the claim that safety is not merely about preventing physical violence in faith communities. Safety, in our tradition, is fundamentally about how we treat the vulnerable, how we offer hospitality and relationship across lines of difference, how we let the blessings we’ve been entrusted with best join in God’s mission in our neighborhoods. Those questions – immediate, practical, relational—face us every single day. Those questions reveal the way of love in our lives to our neighbors, sharing the Good News of the way of Jesus, or not.
Rather than letting fear drive our ways of gathering, we can choose to bring our faith, our critical thinking and our values of hospitality to our life together, with best practices and tools that can shape our shared life in the way of Jesus.
On Monday, January 6, the School for Formation will launch a new online course:
Safe Church: Security and Emergency Management.
Founded on the Baptismal Covenant’s promise of respect for the dignity of every human being, and built with tools from the updated Safe Church policies in The Episcopal Church and ECMN, this course will help you think both broadly and specifically about what safety means in your faith community context. You’ll draft an emergency action plan and conduct a risk assessment – tools that you can take back to your faith community for implementation immediately. You’ll learn the skills to discern the difference between bias-based judgment and truly suspicious behavior, and best practices for responding to suspicious behavior. And, finally, you’ll learn about the ways previous trauma functions in your faith community, and how you can use trauma-informed care to respond.
This course is for anyone who has leadership responsibility in a faith community: clergy, staff, volunteers, vestry or bishop’s committee members, ushers, property committee members. Anyone who has a key to the building will find this a helpful platform for thinking about how we steward the safety of our people and our space while we love our neighbors. Groups from a faith community are welcome to learn together.
As we welcome the light of Epiphany, remember this: the way of Jesus is fundamentally about choosing love over fear. There are many, many ways to do that. We’re grateful for the ways you reflect God’s light in the darkness.
The Rev. Susan Daughtry |
Missioner for Formation
Emilia Allen |
Missional Support
|
|
New Course begins January 6:
Natural disasters, violence, and current events can create unsafe conditions for a faith community and its neighbors. In this course, you’ll work with the Rev. Tim Kingsley to understand policies and procedures for protecting these assets and apply them to your particular context. Free for ECMN faith community members.
Register here.
|
|
Mission Opportunity:
Creating Beloved Community
by Practicing the Way of Love
|
|
Small group facilitation guide & curriculum
|
|
Save the Date: Workshops Coming Up
|
|
 |
How do you prepare adults and parents of children to participate in this sacrament? As a group we will focus on these questions and more. We will explore how what you believe about baptism shapes your baptism preparation ministry. We will look at different preparation models and resources. And we will apply our learnings to your current faith community.
|
|
|
|
This workshop is a next step for those who have completed our
Building Bridges Across Culture and Race
course. Over the course of the day, you’ll receive an updated approach to your Intercultural Development Plan, reflect with others on the steps you’ve taken, and update the plan for your ministry context now.
|
|
|
|
On-Demand Leadership Training
|
|
We've compiled a page of video resources you can access at any time, solo or in groups, largely at no cost. These resources cover a variety of topics -- from Scripture to liturgical training, from Safe Church to storytelling, from evangelism to finance -- these resources are a great first step for lay and ordained leaders sharpening their skills for ministry. Check out what's here, and share any other resources with [email protected]!
|
|
Register Now for Spring Courses
|
|
Podcast
Each week, we explore a central theme through which to explore the characters and context. We’ll engage in traditional forms of sacred reading to unearth the hidden gifts within even the most mundane sentences.
|
|
Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God? by Andrew Root
|
|
An illustrated children’s storybook about people of diverse faiths who rocked the religious boat on behalf of love and justice.
Written by Daneen Akers
|
|
"The hardest part of leadership is understanding that you are not what you are, but what you’re perceived to be by others."
More from Diamond Leadership
|
|
|
from the Atlantic
"Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize. We are easily lured into this new gladiatorial circus, even when we know that it can make us cruel and shallow."
|
|
|
|
Initiated by the congregation at
St Martin-in-the-Fields
in 2017,
HeartEdge
is a movement for renewal, fuelled by people and churches sharing their assets, experience, resource and need.
|
|
|
|
"There is more than one way to form a leader, just as there is more than one way to be a church within the Church. Our Church faces many challenges, and I believe that our people of color hold adaptive strategies worthy of our collective attention – they are, after all, experts in having to adapt to ways and methods not their own. It is beyond time for the dominant culture Church to learn to do the same."
|
|
|
|
Ever wonder
what gives on who gives
? Our friends at
Six Weeks on Money
put together a research-based resource to help understand giving trends. Understand the three kinds of givers so you can communicate strategically, lead stewardship, and grow giving in your context.
Get it here
.
|
|
Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light
Kickoff webinar on Tuesday, January 7 at 7pm.
We will be sharing four key opportunities to mobilize together for climate.
RSVP for the webinar at this link
to join in person, or to watch a recording afterward.
|
|
EHOP in the City
1101 W Broadway Ave, Minneapolis
|
|
Rooted in Jesus
January 21 - 24, 2020
Atlanta, GA
It’s time for the Episcopal Church to come together as disciples of Jesus and take a bold new step into the next decade. Let’s spend four days together, talking about discipleship, leadership, evangelism, formation, preaching, and much more—so we can go out and be the Body of Christ. Together, we are stronger.
Find out more
.
|
|
Share what's on your reading, podcast, or viewing list!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
