Pastoral Prayers at Resurrection

At Resurrection, we are encouraged to write our prayers for worship before the service. The hope is that this will be able to provide a prayer that is mindful of non and nominally religious persons and also is an intentional part of worship.

Beginning today, I am going to include all of the prayers that I write for worship in an online document. Please feel free to use any portion of a prayer or a prayer in its entirety if you feel that it would become a meaningful part of a worship service.

You can find this this and also the resources from my recent blogging presentation in under Resources. Enjoy!

Davidson vs. Kansas - the journey

My wife and I really enjoy watching college basketball. This lead to a dilemma last Sunday night. I was leading the 5:00 PM worship service and she was on duty at the church as well. This meant that we were going to miss the Davidson / KU basketball game. However, we taped it on our DVR and were planning on watching the game when we got back.

Nicole was adamant about not finding out who won until we watched the game ourselves. I did not find out the final score, but did not mind finding out who had won. I found out that KU won, but did not know the final score.

When we got home we watched the game from beginning to end. Here is the amazing thing - even though I knew the destination, the journey was really fun. It was a great game and knowing the final outcome did not spoil the excitement of watching each play.

I believe that this is like our Christian journey - We may have a picture of the ultimate outcome (God wins) but that does not take away from the journey of becoming a deeply committed Christian.

Emergent Church - Does anyone care?

I really resonate with Jared’s post - Emerging Boredom. I have lost a lot of enthusiasm for what has variously been known as the emerging movement, emergent, emerging church - whatever terminology you wish to use. I have tangibly seen this transition in my annual goals which included reading books and visits to churches who would claim to be doing church in a new way.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am passionate about renewal within The United Methodist Church and within the church universal. However, I have lost interest in particular authors and the emergent, emerging, emersion “brand”. This has partially been influenced by my friend, Ben, but I have also seen the development within myself over the past 18 months. I am more excited about solid leadership and renewal of the fervor and discipline of early Methodism within the denomination and throughout the state of Kansas (my particular context).

What do you think?

The Process of Politics

Nicole and I went to the democratic caucus tonight at Leawood Middle School. It was great to be a part of the political process.

We arrived around 6:50 with 7:00 PM the cutoff time to get in line. The parking lot was absolutely full and we had to park in a neighborhood five or six blocks away. We hustled over and got in a line that was about a block long. We filled out the paperwork to affiliate ourselves with the democratic party to be able to participate in the caucus.

When we got in the building, we signed in, turned in our paperwork and made our way into the cafeteria as the gym was already full. The Clinton supporters were on one side of the room and the Obama supporters were on the other side of the room. Once all of the registered democrats had signed in within the gym those supporting Obama moved to the gym and those supporting Clinton moved to the cafeteria.

Gathering at the caucus in Leawood Middle School

We heard a speech from a Clinton supporter and from an Obama supporter and then lined up to be counted. We were organized to stand into parallel lines and each line counted itself by starting on one end and turning to the person behind you for the count to continue. The results were gathered from each line and the results counted.

Obama supporters lining up to be counted

The results in our precint:
Barack Obama - 1983
Hillary Clinton - 423

Then we transitioned to a time of electing the delegates that would represent this precinct in the third congressional district gathering in April. This was a much smaller group. We stayed until the end and really enjoyed the event.

Selecting delegates to represent the precinct

A woman at the election of the delegates said that four years ago there were 30 people at the caucus in this precint. There were over 2300 people this year. That is amazing.

I do think that this is a historic year in politics. Things can change and we can be a part of it - yes we can.