on campus ministry April 1, 2009
Posted by cajames in PCUSA.Tags: campus ministry, PCUSA, Presbyterian
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Today is April Fool’s Day, and there are some great things happening on the web, as usual. The best I’ve seen so far is today’s Brian Lehrer Show from WNYC on GM’s New Plan (hopefully audio is coming later).
Today is also the first event for Presbyterian Bloggers Unite – on campus ministry. It’s honestly hard for me to write on this right now, as the PCUSA’s support for campus ministry is changing very quickly because of staff cutbacks that merged the campus ministry office with the youth ministry office and cut the staff who had been working in campus ministry. I’ve worked with both offices over the years, and I’m trying to be hopeful about the merger even though I have some concerns.
That said, I’m not going to dwell on the uncertainties of the future here. For me, campus ministry was a time of full engagement with the life of the church. In high school, I was very active in youth ministry programs, but toward the end of those days things changed in my home church and I felt left out. However, when I went to college, I resolved from the beginning that I would try to get involved differently, so I set out for church that first Sunday morning even before classes started. I was alone in the bathroom that morning, even in the Deep South, but I quickly found a home in that wonderful congregation.
Soon I discovered that there was more going on for college students and got involved in the Westminster Fellowship sponsored out of the church. We were never a large group, but something special was happening in our midst that could not be measured by numbers. Through time spent together, Bible study, and special trips, we got to know one another and provided a place for people to gather who were looking for someplace to call home in the midst of a campus filled with Greek letter societies, other religious organizations, and affinity groups that in some way were more about exclusion than inclusion.
During my sophomore year, I was brought on board as a campus peer minister, paid a small stipend simply to maintain the email list, make announcements, help organize events, and show up when we met. My junior year, we welcomed an associate pastor to the church who was responsible in part for campus ministry, and she helped us grow in faith even more. We even organized the first statewide gathering of Presbyterian campus ministries in Mississippi.
I also got involved in campus ministry nationally with the Presbyterian Student Strategy Team, where we organized national gatherings of Presbyterian college students for the first time in a number of years. The numbers were often small, but the things happening across the denomination, in ecumenical ministries and in congregations, always surprised and encouraged me. I also traveled to several regional events across the country to represent the team and engage with other college students about their experiences in the church.
I could write much, much more about my days in campus ministry, but I’m amazed these days by how the connections I made in those four years continue to sustain me in my ministry today. Imagine my surprise three years ago when I walked into my room at an event for new pastors and discovered that my roommate was an old friend who had served with me on PSST! I count others from conferences and events during my college years among my best friends even today.
I believe that the college years were a formative time for my ministry, and I can’t imagine engaging that sense of call without campus ministry. I pray that all of us across the PCUSA will work to meet college students where they are and make a place for them to be welcome in the church during these formative years, not so much out of fear of losing them but because we know that they have gifts to share and need a place where they can feel at home.
thanksgiving October 13, 2008
Posted by cajames in PCUSA, life, thanksgiving.Tags: ordination exams, travel, vacation
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It’s been a while since I’ve posted, perhaps long enough to make some people (including me) wonder if I’ve abandoned this venture…. but today I have several things to offer up in thanksgiving that I’d like to share. I just returned from eight incredible days of travel, and there is much to be thankful for…
- I’m thankful for candidates for the ministry of Word and Sacrament who inspire and show incredible insight into the life of faith even as they do difficult work on ordination exams.
- I’m thankful for ministers and elders who take time out to evaluate and assist those who are journeying into ministry with honesty and grace.
- I’m thankful for friends whose presence can be meaningful and grace-filled even when words are not spoken.
- I’m thankful for the connectional church that binds us together across the miles.
- I’m thankful for friends who show hospitality, grace, and generosity.
- I’m thankful for the beauty of God’s creation in nature and in human creativity.
- I’m thankful for moments when reconciliation gets lived out.
- I’m thankful for an approach to LaGuardia that gives an incredible grand tour of NYC and everything around!
- I’m thankful for safe travels, including four flights with no significant delays or lost baggage!
Romans 8 July 21, 2008
Posted by cajames in sermons.Tags: Romans, sermons
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So, over the past two Sundays, I’ve been preaching on Romans 8. It’s been fun to approach these things as a series. This Sunday, the Lectionary takes us to Romans 8:26-39 to finish the chapter. Trygve David Johnson has a nice look at this text at Theolog’s Blogging toward Sunday.
The end of Romans 8 is definitely in my top three favorite biblical texts. It’s just incredible stuff. Now normally I don’t turn to commentaries, especially this early in the week, but today I figured I might as well use that investment known as the New Interpreter’s Bible that sits on my bookshelf. I’m glad I did. This is quite possibly the longest commentary on fourteen verses in the whole twelve-volume set — in sum, this section covers about twenty pages.
As I read, though, I found the text illuminated in such an incredible way. There’s nothing quite like this — so many passages to fill so many sermons, so many inspiring words that illuminate a text that was already inspiring to begin with. Still, the end almost had me in tears.
We paraphrase, in conclusion, the final two verses of the section. Paul has spoken, and we must speak, of the love of the one true God. This love of God calls across the dark intervals of meaning, reaches into the depths of human despair, embraces those who live in the shadow of death or the overbright light of present life, challenges the rulers of the world and shows them up as a sham, looks at the present with clear faith and and the future with sure hope, overpowers all powers that might get in the way, fills the outer dimensions of the cosmos, and declares to the world that God is God, that Jesus the Messiah is the world’s true Lord, and that in him love has won the victory. This powerful, overmastering love grasps Paul, and sustains him in his praying, his preaching, his journeying, his writing, his pastoring, and his suffering, with the strong sense of the presence of the God who had loved him from the beginning and had put that love into action in Jesus. This is the love because of which there is no condemnation. This is the love because of which those justified are surely glorified. And this is the love, seen surpremely in the death of the Messiah, which reaches out to the whole world with the exodus message, the freedom message, the word of joy and justice, the word of the gospel of Jesus.
– N.T. Wright, “Romans,” The New Interpreter’s Bible
With that said, I’m not sure that there’s much more to be said. But anything you’d like to offer would still be appreciated!
Wall-E: close to home? July 4, 2008
Posted by cajames in life.Tags: discipleship, movies, Wall-E
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I finally ventured out last night with a couple friends to see Wall-E. As usual, Pixar brings us a great movie, and I suspect I’ll be back to see it again in the theater. It was that good. And I’m not at all a movie person!
There are so many possibilities for thinking about allegory with Wall-E: the concern of global warming, the need for personal connection, even how the world pushes off the sacred. However, there’s something striking me about Wall-E’s commitment that bears some reflection.
Wall-E is, at his core, a faithful robot. He keeps doing what he was programmed to do (and no surprise, since he seems to be running some variant of Mac OS!) Even when all the other Wall-Es on Earth stop functioning properly, he keeps going. He scavenges parts off of other broken-down robots to keep himself running, and his ingenuity is something surely beyond his original design.
But Wall-E is something more than a faithful automaton, working beyond his scheduled useful life span. He recognizes that there is more to his world than just compacting the leftover trash of Earth. He is unafraid to collect things that strike him as interesting. You might say that Wall-E has a heart (as only Pixar can give). In the end, this ability to think outside the box leads him to incredible discoveries of love and life.
I have to wonder: Is Wall-E a good model for the life of a disciple? Is Wall-E’s faithfulness to his task while recognizing the things of beauty around him something we can learn from? Does Wall-E give us a little bit of the path toward a new creation that we so desperately long for?
There are surely countless other discussions that could emerge from watching Wall-E, but this is what struck me close to home.
technology and the PCUSA General Assembly July 1, 2008
Posted by cajames in PCUSA.Tags: General Assembly, PCUSA, technology
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Like many Presbyterians, I won’t ever forget my first General Assembly. The year was 1998. I had just finished my freshman year of college, and somehow I managed to be invited to attend GA as a volunteer with the Office of Communications. I flew to Charlotte a few days before the assembly began, checked into my hotel, and ventured over to the convention center, where I met people in person I had only spoken with online.
I was immediately put to work on the project of the day: helping to set up an Internet “cafe” for those attending the assembly. Although much of the convention center was brand new, we didn’t have a high speed connection (probably because of a high cost to set it up). We set up a local network of ten or so computers, then connected it to a couple special boxes that shared four dialup connections across the network. Even the newsroom and the web editing stations were set up in this way! Most news was posted first on PresbyNet before it made the PCUSA web site. Mountains of paper information never made it on the web, at least not during the assembly.
Flash forward to 2008. I’m on vacation, not at the assembly, but that didn’t matter. From a quiet village on the coast of Maine, I was able to watch live streaming video of the plenary sessions, read along with the committee reports, and chat live with other Presbyterians from around the country. I might as well have been there, if all that mattered was the business done! The chat room Presbyterians even started proposing a new group of “Web Advisory Delegates” to be polled before each vote! Bloggers from among the commissioners, advisory delegates, and observers took time to post often, and some old stalwart publications even brought in people to blog the assembly.
The technology behind GA this year, at least from a distance, was the best I’ve seen it. Everything just worked, almost well enough for me to wonder if we need to spend the time and money to get 1,000 people together to have these kinds of conversations that we could have at home.
But having been there before myself reminds me that there’s something about General Assembly that can’t be recreated on a computer screen. The people we encounter in person show us the breadth of the church that goes far beyond one congregation, and the worship services point us toward a new song of praise that seems beyond belief. Amidst all my memories of five assemblies, the one I can’t put out of my mind was opening worship in Charlotte – 13,000 Presbyterians gathered around the Word and the Table to worship.
The GA Junkie made an interesting point in his reflections on the assembly today:
We polity wonks and GA Junkies have an insight into how God, through the Holy Spirit, works in our covenant communities through these governing body meetings and our connectionalism. We need to recognize that the roughly 2000 people here at the General Assembly represent about 0.1% of the PC(USA).
Will technology help the church to understand this work of the Holy Spirit better? Only time will tell.
back to blogging, again June 29, 2008
Posted by cajames in life.Tags: blogging, Presbyterian
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So after a three-year hiatus, I’m back to blogging. Why?
- As the three-year mark nears in Whitestone, I’m feeling a tug to engage a little more of why I do what I do while I’m doing it.
- I’m trying to convince myself that my life isn’t boring. Other people might actually want to hear a little more of what I’m thinking!
- I’m a little jealous of the attention other bloggers are getting these days. The Presbyterian Church (USA) just elected a blogger as its moderator. Other friends are blogging more and more. Pastors are engaging issues of importance online and not just in the pulpit.
- I’m always interested in trying out new toys. I’ve done a couple blogs before on Blogger, so WordPress here I come!
Look to hear a little more in the coming days about what’s been going on with me.
Freedom Summer 2005 June 21, 2005
Posted by cajames in imported.Tags: civil rights, Missisissippi
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Forty-one years ago today, three young men were killed as they sought to help others exercise their rights as Americans to vote and as humans to live free of fear. They came to Mississippi as part of a massive influx of people to register voters in a state known as a “closed society” that ensured that only a few kept their power. They came to Mississippi as young men but never left alive.
Today, one man was convicted of helping to orchestrate the murder of these three young men. He lived a life in Mississippi that sought to limit the rights of others to be human and American. In a previous trial, one juror kept the others from conviction because she could not believe that a preacher could do such a thing. Now feeble and infirm, continuing to deny any connection to the crime or to the organized hate that facilitated it, he faces up to sixty years in prison, never to walk free in Mississippi again.
Summer began today, and I think Mississippi can call it another Freedom Summer. People from around the world have come to Mississippi to cover the trial, and we have seen glimpses of a new Mississippi. This new Mississippi is like the new creation that Paul talks about in his epistles: it hasn’t come yet, and we don’t know what it will look like. We may even miss it when it comes our way, and it probably won’t be finished in time for us to see what it looks like. Nonetheless, it is coming.
Today was one glimpse of that new creation, a new world where justice and peace reign, where those who wrong others are forced to face their sin and begin the process of repentance.
Tomorrow, another glimpse of that new creation is set to begin just around the corner from the courthouse where justice was finally served today. At the Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Living Memorial Civil Rights Education Summit and UNESCO’s Breaking the Silence Project, teachers and others will gather to talk about how to teach about these events in schools. When I was growing up, the most I ever learned about the Civil Rights Movement came from news coverage of the release of Mississippi Burning. It is certainly a sign of the new creation that people are trying to teach these things to the children of this place that remains so torn by the violence that has marked its history for so many centuries.
Pray that the new creation may come quickly into our midst in Mississippi.
some new music (with old roots) June 7, 2005
Posted by cajames in imported.Tags: music
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Several weeks ago, I decided I would “pre-order” Coldplay’s new album X&Y from iTunes. So this morning, I got up and downloaded the songs and put them on my iPod before I went walking so I would have something new and interesting to listen to. I was generally underwhelmed, but right as I was getting ready to change to something entirely different, “A Message” came on.
Within seconds, I knew the song, and I nearly stopped walking to listen more closely. “A Message” is clearly indebted to the wonderful Samuel Crossman hymn “My Song Is Love Unknown” with the tune LOVE UNKNOWN by John Ireland, a fact only slightly acknowledged on the web (see here and here for the references I have found). Here’s my interpretation of the lyrics, since none that I have found on the web are accurate with the references to the original hymn:
My song is love
Love to the loveless shown
And it goes on
You don’t have to be aloneYour heavy heart
Is made of stone
And its so hard to see clearly
You don’t have to be on your own
You don’t have to be on your ownAnd I’m not gonna take it back
And I’m not gonna say I don’t mean that
You’re a target that I’m aiming at
And I get that message homeMy song is love…
My song is love unknown
But I’m on fire for you, clearly
You don’t have to be alone
You don’t have to be on your ownAnd I’m not gonna take it back
And I’m not gonna say I don’t mean that
You’re the target that I’m aiming at
And I’m nothing on my own
Got to get that message homeAnd I’m not gonna stand and wait
Not gonna leave it until it’s much too late
On a platform I’m gonna stand and say
That I’m nothing on my own
And I love you, please come homeMy song is love, is love unknown
And I’ve got to get that message home
Some reviewers and listeners have called this a love song, but I can’t. The similarity between the hymn and the song is striking — I wouldn’t call it plagiarism but could certainly describe it as inspiration. There are certainly elements that move the song beyond the Lenten themes of the hymn, but I find it to be a deeply spiritual thing.
The next time someone claims that Christianity is dead in Britain or the US or anywhere, I will simply point them to this song. The next time someone says that old hymns aren’t good for anything, I will point them to this song that many are already describing as a hit. It’s clearly not the age of the music that makes things good or bad — it is the depth of the spirit in it.
old habits reincarnated June 6, 2005
Posted by cajames in imported.Tags: home
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As I spend more time at home, I’m finding that some of my old habits are coming back. For example:
- It’s really hard to get any “work” done at home. I try to read or do something other than watch TV or sit in front of the computer, but I always seem to end up right back here where I started. I recognize that part of that has to do with different space and having other people closer in to my space, but I still find it hard to do the reading and other sorts of things that I would have done in another space with this same amount of time.
- Somewhat related to this are eating and personal care habits. I all too easily break back into unhealthy eating and excuses to not exercise while I’m here. I try pretty hard, but I don’t succeed. I’ve always had much better success when I can start from scratch and do things in an entirely new way.
- I either live in my room or outside the house. Thanks to a rearranged room, I have more openness in my bedroom than I have had since I was little. However, I can’t spend much time outside of it without leaving the house altogether. I find that I have to take some kind of trip every day to keep my spirits up and simply make sure that I don’t completely lose it!
I’m simply glad this is a temporary arrangement!
one of the strangest things I’ve seen in a while… May 26, 2005
Posted by cajames in imported.Tags: fun
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While shopping for birthday cards tonight, I ran across this one that was too wonderful not to buy:
When asked to describe herself, Mille Grosler exclaims, “Toaster ovens! I’m all about toaster ovens. I love the toaster part, and then there’s the oven part. I love that. Give me a toaster oven and I can die happy.”
Inside, the card goes on:
You’re weird.
That’s why I like you.
Too good not to pass along!
