February 2018

Greetings to the Beloved,

 What interesting bookmarks we have for our holy days of Ash Wednesday and Easter.  Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day and Easter falls on April Fool’s Day.  We have been given a rare opportunity to converse with our neighbors about our faith as we make connections between these days.

 The bible verse that has framed our discussion for adult forum on apologetics has come to mind. 

 Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16 yet do it with gentleness and reverence.   

1 Peter 3:15b-16a.

 So be ready with gentleness and reverence to converse about these days.  Your voice is important.  What will you have to say when the conversation presents itself?

 The day we gather together and receive the ash cross on our forehead, remembering we are dust and to dust we shall return is the day our society will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with displays of love in the form of cards, candies and flowers.  What will you say?

 When I am marked with the ash cross on my forehead, I remember who I am.  I remember my mortality.  I am dust and to dust I shall return.  I also remember my origin, where I came from, created by God, in the image of God and I remember the cross that I received on my forehead marking me as a child of God.

 Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

 And I know that because of Jesus, through the cross, I am God’s.  That’s where I started and that’s where I will go and that is where I am now.   You understand this.  You who have been steeped in the gospel and feed at Jesus’ table, know this.  How do I translate this into the language of the world? 

 The day I remember that I will not last forever is the day I remember God’s valentine sent to me through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  It needs some work but I trust that the Holy Spirit will help me and give me opportunity to witness the love that I have received from God.  God doesn’t wait for a day, like Valentine’s Day but everyday loves me, fully and wholly, just as I am. 

This is my prayer for you.  I pray that the Holy Spirit will help you to be ready, to find the words or actions that will give you the opportunity to witness to the hope that is in you in the community where you live on Valentine’s Day and every day. Start with God’s love for you.

 Believing It Boldly Loving Everyday,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

LEAD ASSESSMENT

Hey Disciples – Students of Jesus,

The LEAD Team has been listening to God and listening to each other as we have met together since February and we are listening to you. We have listened to you through the LEAD Assessment (May) and the LEAD Survey of these 5 questions (Oct);

1.Besides being friendly, what are 3 things about this congregation that you would not want to change as you welcome new people?

2.What is this congregation known for in the community?

3.What are you personally passionate about that would make a difference in the neighborhood?

4.What do you perceive the challenges in the neighborhood to be?

5.How has God positioned this congregation to serve its neighbors?

The results of these 5 survey questions are posted in the alcove off of the kitchen at church. There you will find all of the answers of those that participated in the survey and the LEAD Team’s distilling into themes from these answers and there is room for you to respond.

Please take a stroll through this room. In January and February, we will be listening to you through focus groups, taking what we have heard so far and asking more questions and listening. We are listening strategically and it takes time. Also this is new for us, so we are learning.

This is not superficial listening to appease people but an active kind of listening that seeks out diverse voices before making key decisions. We want to know how this community influences your faith journey, your relationship with God and your neighbor so that we may work together in sharing what is helpful to you within our community, in the church and beyond our walls. We ask this because we believe that God has called us together to be about kingdom work. Your voice is important and so is our neighbor’s voice. God is working in the midst of us.

Of course we will listen to the leadership of the council and committees but we will also listen to individuals and other kinds of groups – like Bible study groups and groups that have a common interest. If you would like to host or be a part of a focus group, please let anyone on the LEAD team know. If you would like to meet individually with a couple of LEAD Team members please let us know. Your voice is important and we want to listen to you.

The purpose of the LEAD Team is to engage in strategic planning that will help to guide the community of Christ the King to be a vibrant community that faithfully engages in the work that the Holy Spirit calls us to do.

Now a typical expectation is that we will add a NEW THING because that is so often how we experience long range planning or strategic planning. The last three efforts of the Long Range Planning Committee were a new organ, a new Director of Youth & Family Ministry and a new mission statement. So we changed our name from Long Range Planning to LEAD Team in hopes of getting at the elusive adaptive change over the tactile change. This NEW THING might be different. It might not be something you can easily touch or feel.

We want to be a faithful community that follows Jesus. We want to be vibrant and relevant in our world. We are called by God to be workers in the kingdom of God, salt and light (see Matthew 5). To do this kind of work, we need to be committed to deepening relationships, building trust and growing in our discipleship. What we are learning from our LEAD partners is that this grows out of a life of prayer and discernment with leadership that is open to listening, experimenting and innovating. And it is messy. That is the nature of learning. It feels awkward and some of us resist and push back. Others will feel relief or excitement.

We are spiritual beings and not merely people who do church. We want to be faithful to God and to each other. Keep praying, keep listening to God and to each other. Pray for our LEAD Team and participate in a Focus Group or contact us for an individual meeting if that is your preference.

BIBLE – Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

And the LEAD Team – Mary Knudson-Dion, Chris Rothfuss, Susan Surom, Matt Orvick, Yvonne Page, and Eric Klein

It Is Good News.

Greetings to God’s Kingdom Workers,

We have good news to announce in this month where we celebrate the advent, the coming of Jesus and marking his arrival at Christmas. Our world needs to hear the witness of our faith – each and every one of us. We need to hear the witness of our faith in our own community. As we pull out our Advent wreath and candles, manger scenes and familiar Christmas carols and listen to the witness of John the Baptist and Mary, we get ready to join with them in announcing Jesus’ entrance into this world. It is good news.

Let’s take our cue from the toddler who eagerly joins in unwrapping the manger with all its characters, including the baby Jesus. The toddler understands that Jesus has come into his life and sees him from the perspective of how he travels this world – in a car seat. Could we too, be a witness that shares with the world how we see Jesus coming right into the very heart of our lives, including our means of transportation?

And when we find ourselves hesitant, like a scientist making a scientific announcement who wants to be so sure that what has been discovered is true and accurate, exploring all possibilities, we too continue to explore all the possibilities daring to ask the questions, wondering and entering into the conversations that will help us to step out in faith, sharing our discoveries of how God has come to us and continues to come and be with us.

We announce the coming of Jesus into our world and into our lives. It is good news. We speak it and sing it and can’t help but join in the unwrapping and revealing of Emmanuel, God with us. Trust that the Holy Spirit is with us as we help others to see and understand the discovery that yes, God is very, very close to us and loves us.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

Blessed

Greetings To God’s Faithful People,

A question that one of our candidates for the Director of Youth & Family Ministry positions asked of us, the search committee, was that if we could use only one word to describe Christ the King, what would it be? We had great answers around the table, like Friendly, Welcoming, Outreaching, Mission-minded and Faithful.

A while back, I was told that Becca Ode pronounced us as “Blessed”. She did this at one of our outdoor worship services last summer. It was a beautiful day to worship outside and she was enjoying it. As we were visited by a snow egret flying above us and as Becca was making her way to communion, she said, “We are blessed.” Out of the mouths of babes, we are named.

Yes, we are blessed. Thank you, Becca.

What’s your word to describe our community at Christ the King? How do you think the Holy Spirit would describe us? Do we see ourselves as people who are loved fully and completely by God? Do we see ourselves as blessed? What happens to us when we start here, at this place? It is our home base. Created in the image of God and loved, completely and wholly loved, washed and claimed in the waters of Baptism and fed at the Lord’s Table with his body and blood.

When we start here at this place and move forward with this assurance and trust, we see ourselves for who we truly are. From this place we move more deeply in relationship with Jesus and want to do something with what we have been given. We can’t keep it to ourselves; this love propels us to move and to act.

So it is not surprising that when Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven in the parables of Matthew 13, they are all parables of action, not of stagnant or inanimate things or a place.

The Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a sower sowing seed on all kinds of soil. The Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to someone sowing good seed in his fields and an enemy comes at night and plants weeds and they are allowed to grow together. The Kingdom of Heaven is like someone planting a mustard seed that starts small and grows big. The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with lots of flour. The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone found and hid, then goes and sells all that he has and buys the field where it is hidden. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of pearls and on finding a pearl of great value, he sells everything in order to buy it. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net thrown into the sea that catches all kinds and the good are put in baskets and the bad are thrown out.

Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” and they answered, “Yes.” Then Jesus encourages them to bring out this treasure and tell others. We know these treasurers, so practice bringing them out and sharing with others. You might begin with one word or pray with these parables and discover the richness of God’s kingdom as the Holy Spirit breathes life into these parables.

Believing It Boldly Loving Everyday,
Pastor Connie Spitzack

LEAD Assessment

Greetings to Jesus’ faithful disciples,

I’m very proud to report that 100% of our council has taken the LEAD assessment. Will you help us? The leadership at LEAD encourages a goal of half our worshiping population. Our average attendance is 153, so our goal is to have 77. I receive a weekly update from LEAD as to how many have taken the assessment from Christ the King. We have 35 assessments completed as of March 27. Thank you for taking the time to fill out the 20 questions. We have until Wednesday, April 12, to reach and hopefully exceed our goal.

You may take the assessment at church between worship services or on Wednesday mid-week services. I have paper copies available as well as electronic devices to complete the assessment with. Please help us to get a better lay of the landscape at Christ the King. Church members, friends of Christ the King, and visitors are welcomed to take the assessment. We appreciate all the voices coming together to help us get a better understanding of who we are.

The results of this assessment will be tabulated at LEAD, and we will receive a written report and have Jim Merhaut, our LEAD coach, go over the results with our LEAD Team. Our LEAD team will then share the results with you. If you are interested in seeing an example of the Assessment Results report, please let me know and I would be happy to share the sample copy with you.

The Assessment will give us a picture of where we are on the Leadership Landscape. This is just one of the tools that we will be using to put our Mission and Vision Statement into practice.

The Leadership Landscape measures what we say about ourselves along two axes. The first is the range between deep, bold, consequential faith in Jesus Christ and complacent faith in Jesus Christ. This is not a judgment on faithfulness. It is a metric that gauges movement or faith practices as they are more or less shaping daily life. Ask, “How is faith being lived out?” The second is the range between innovative and cautious. This describes our willingness to experiment, run pilot projects, try new ideas, or test hunches compared with our need to maintain our ways of life. Ask, “Is there space to create?”

In Peggy Hahn’s book, The Sacred Valley, one of the first gifts about Christian leadership she received from her pilgrimage on the Inca Trail was that she was not as in good a shape as she thought she was. By the end of the first day of a 4-day hike, they have to make a choice: either return to Cusco or continue the hike to Machu Picchu. Committing to the journey requires stepping out into an uncertain future. She quickly learned that success in hiking or leadership is as much about how you think as it is about what you do.

“We can talk ourselves into trying hard things we have never done before and attempting to move in a new direction or we can just as effectively talk ourselves into a panic and resist something uncertain. What we say to ourselves really matters. We can set a posture of openness or we can close the door to expanding our worldview and God-view by how we behave and think. Growth is a choice we make. I am talking about a readiness to become more ourselves, growing into who God made us to be. A real walk in faith.” (p. 7-8)

We have been given some good tools here to assist us in looking at ourselves from a new or different perspective—a perspective that I hope will engage our faith in Jesus Christ and move us away from complacency. In the short time I have been involved, I have grown and challenged my own mindset by recognizing the areas where I have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. I have thought about how I tell my story of how the Holy Spirit is transforming and changing me. I give thanks to God for the opportunity to take this journey with you as we engage in God’s kingdom work. As I have heard repeatedly in our gospel lessons from John, the harvest is ripe—we have work to do, this is our time.

Join me in prayer:

O God, you have called your servants
to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love is supporting us;
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Partners on the Journey,
Pastor Connie Spitzack