Bridging the Gap

My favorite season is Advent. Growing up, my family did a great job of embodying the season of Advent. We had joy as the decorations went up. We had anticipation as we did the Advent Calendar together. We had peace and longing as we lit the advent wreath before each meal together and sang O Come O Come Emmanuel.

Yet as a pastor, I've been forced to realize that many in our churches do not know the meanings behind our traditions. Do the lights remind us of the coming of the light of the world into our darkness? Do the presents remind us of the greatest gift of all? Does the Advent Wreath speak of longing for complete peace, justice, love, etc.?

In the Emergent Church, one of the marks is a reclaiming and re-appropriating of Ancient symbols. While my church is far from emergent, I've used this idea to remind me to "tell the old old story." In Advent, we must articulate the importance of our longing and the symbology of the decorations, lights, & wreath.

For the last two years, one of my congregants has made it very clear that she is angry when we don't sing Christmas songs starting at the beginning of Advent. While I find this both disturbing and sad, I have found the need to bridge the gap between those who celebrate Advent and Christmas with those who celebrate only Christmas. This year, we are doing a Hymn Sing for 10 min. before worship in order to get some of our favorite Christmas songs in. This frees us to focus more on the longing of Advent during the worship service.

So to honor the longing of Advent, we've been exploring the ways our world is broken and in need of Christ, in the future, in the past, and in the present, through us. It has been great! The longing has been a core feature.

Yet in order to bridge the gap, we have done all this through the Christmas story itself: Kings, Shepherds, Nativity (with an end times story and Christ's Baptism thrown in early on). As a pastor, I have to help interpret the story to where people are, not where I think we should be. Hopefully, through bridging the gap, we are speaking to the longing in all of us, and our empowerment through Christ to make a difference today.

Investing in Hope

One of my first favorite scriptures was Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future." I quoted this scripture often before I finally thought I should really read the book I so often quoted. I then found that Jeremiah was a pretty doom and gloom kind of guy! Where was the hope filled guy from 29:11? I didn't get very far into the book.

In seminary, we studied Jeremiah, particularly Jeremiah 32. In this passage Jeremiah buys a field. He tells the people that the land will be taken from them, and then he buys land. That tangible act was a symbol of hope. After preaching over and over that their sin would catch up with them, he didn't just say that hope still existed, he invested in that hope.

I have often found myself to be the youngest person at gatherings such as UMW, committee meeting, conference gatherings etc. (that is less the case now). As such, I am regularly asked if I see hope for the United Methodist Church.

As a young person in a more elderly church, I often hear people talk with despair about our world. There is almost a hope that Revelation may actually be coming to pass because people are so saddened and upset by the state of our world. People turn to me and want to know if I think that Revelation is coming.

Though I look at our Church and our churches and see many things that are dysfunctional, sinful, and irrelevant, though I look at our world and see many things that are dysfunctional, sinful, and shocking, I believe that God continues to have plans to prosper us and not to harm us. Plans to give us hope and a future. I believe that so strongly that I too chose a tangible symbol. I invest in the future with my son Micah. Micah, along with Isabella Graves, Wesley Hanover, Nora Masland-Sarani, Declan Stuntz, Claire Van Fleet, Miriam Irwin, and all the other precious babies born and to be born this year. This is our choice, our privileged, our promise. The future holds possibilities filled with hope for this world. God's Kingdom will come, and, God willing, John and Micah and I will get to help bring that kingdom here on earth.

Change, History, and Hope

It's been a while since I started and wrote in my blog "A Young Seminarian's View." I can't believe it has been three and a half years since Seminary. Now I'm a full fledged Ordained Elder, a part of "the system," a part of "the connection," for good and for bad. So I transition from a Young Seminarian's View to a Young Pastor's view. One day I'll have to change the title again, but for now, here I am.

So who am I now? I'm Jennifer Burns: follower of Jesus Christ and servant to God, wife of John Burns (extraordinary massage therapist, servant, husband, and father), mother of Micah Glen Burns (almost two months old! Strong, expressive, and healthy), Pastor of Howard UMC Findlay, OH (relational, historic, welcoming, diverse economically, struggling financially, older with some younger families, outreach & small group oriented). I'm other things as well: daughter, sister, aunt, avid reader, sporadic gardener, globally minded with a heart for the poor, the disenfranchised, the faces and perspectives missing from our congregations.

How did I end up here? Particularly as a pastor in West Ohio? I grew up in the church and I've always loved God and had a relationship with him. Over time, I've learned and grown and wrestled with questions of faith, love, theology. When I was 16, after a year of wrestling with "what am I going to do with my life" and "could I be called to be a pastor?" God spoke to me and said "This is You." It's a much longer and more amazing story, but I'll save that for another time. I went to Ohio Wesleyan for college (BA in Psychology), and Wesley Theological Seminary in DC (Yes, I proudly call myself a Master of Divinity...LOL). I was appointed back in my home state at HUMC and have been here ever since.

What does Community mean for me? A couple years ago, I decided that we needed a young clergy network only to discover that one was already underway! I merged my husband and my efforts with theirs and Refresh was born. We as clergy families have unique needs and life experiences. I have already seen fruit from this network as comfort, support, community, and hope have been born out of connection. I am blessed and eager to be part of helping these fruit grow and expand, touching more young leaders (pastors & families) in the church. Here's to a year of deeper connections as we get to know each other better.

How about you? Who are you now? How did you end up there? What does community mean to you?

Evangelism

Evangelism has often been a dirty word in liberal circles. I grew up with a clear distinction between missions and evangelism (with the focus on missions). In reading "The Continuing Conversion of the Church" I've been amazed and excited by the merging of the two in ways I have not seen before. The things I've always learned about missions and being a "missionary" apply to evangelism.

Most startling is the idea that evangelism is a two way street. In translating the gospel into another culture, another life, we continue to be converted, changed, as well. Our understanding changes, our assumptions are challenged. One theme harped on in this book is that no cultural manifestation of faith is normative. In sharing our faith with others, in translating the powerful message of the gospel, we are shaped, changed, and grow.

Evangelism itself is scary. Evangelism can be pushed as an important response to faith, a mandate by Jesus, our loving response to caring for our neighbors. I've never seen it pushed as an important aspect of the development of our own faith. For without evangelism, without bearing witness, without being an interpreter of faith, we miss an important part of testing, stretching, and growing our faith.

Pacifism ramblings

I'm reading Bonhoeffer right now. I was thinking about his proposal for an ecumenical peace convocation to outlaw war. My father is a pacifist and I've been a pacifist too. The idea of war sickens me. But I thought about all of this in light of our changing society. "War" is almost an anachronistic word today. War used to be what happened when nations attacked each other.

We've moved further and further away from the "Gentleman's war" that once existed. Now we talk about the "war on drugs" and "war on terror" but these kinds of things are ways to legitimize our government fighting against something that is not another government. Our way of reaching beyond our bounds because we are afraid of the reality that what happens in one country dramatically affects another country and rarely has to do with direct government action.

War still exists, obviously, but is it really that I'm against war? Is that a complete statement? No. I oppose war for the same reason I oppose gangs, domestic violence, terrorism, etc. I oppose violence of all kinds: physical, emotional, sexual, individual, group, and national. I am a pacifist because I believe that God desires a world of peace, not violence.

People sometimes bring up Hitler as a response to my pacifism or my stance against the Death Penalty. I do not believe it is right to stand by and do nothing when people are behaving violently! What bothers me is that we tend to take violent action before non-violent, simple and brutal action before creative but complex actions. We do not do preventative work but jump to violence after someone else has caused violence. Our world has had enough. God calls for peace in our homes, in our streets, and between our nations. How do we prevent violence? love our neighbors. How do we respond to violence? By taking a stand, no mater the cost. Bonhoeffer resorted to violence, and I was not in his situation, but at the least he was willing to take a stand against the violence of Hitler. I hope to do better at my pacifism in the future, for it cannot be a passive pacifism, it must be active!

TransFORM - a missional community formation network

Awesome video about churches doing creative things and how they understand themselves and their process of formation. Lots of other things about those communities here too! Take a Look! Dream BIG!
TransFORM!
TransFORM - a missional community formation network

DC and Ohio - Culture pt. 2: The Extraordinary

I remember going downtown for dinner with John one day and seeing dozens and dozens of cop cars and probably a hundred officers of various kinds including the Secret Service. That was when my brother-in-law told me that DC is a place where the completely extraordinary is completely ordinary.

This has only been confirmed over time. Yesterday began an international summit at the DC convention center to discuss securing nuclear materials around the world. It's the largest gathering of world leaders led by a US President since the founding of the United Nations! What do we talk about? Traffic. This amazing event, that anyone around the country should feel in aww of and privileged to witness is met, to some degree, with indulgence by those in DC. I don't mean to criticize, it is just that we are so used to major events of national and international significance that we barely even blink. We have to readjust our schedule to get places, sure. We may be busier if we work for the government. But overall, it is a normal part of life in DC.

Whenever we are over-exposed to something, it changes us. We talk about violence on DC desensitizing us. Perhaps we talk about urban isolation or indifference. In coming to DC I discovered how much of Ohio's geography I'd taken for granted. Whatever the specific case, the question becomes: What can we do to keep from numbing out? I don't have any complete answers, what I try is simply to continue to expose myself to radically different things. I go to Africa, I move to DC, I travel, I form friendships with those who are different from me. I hope that in doing those things, I am a better person, I am more open to God's witness in front of me, and I am more aware of places for God to use me.