We’ve been talking about “Core Values”

God's Gifts: Jesus came among us to serve, ...

Our Response: We serve and care for those ...

Wonder Bread and Daily Bread

When I was growing up, January was when my Dad's employer would negotiate contracts with the Union. I didn't know what that meant exactly, but I did know that sometimes it meant that the Union would go on strike, and I would get to see my dad every day for awhile. It also meant that the family's resources would be stretched thin until the strike settled. We prepared ahead, and then we "made do". I loved the way my dad would "make do". He cooked chili and spaghetti, and baked wonderful bread and cinnamon rolls. No Wonder Bread at our house! These were uncommon treats when he was working 2nd shift six and seven nights a week.

A lot of people are "making do" in these economic times, including members of our own congregation. I am glad for those we have been able to help through the Love Fund, Reach Out Lakota, Wilmington, and Roselawn food pantries. I am thankful for you, Christ the King members, that you consider these ministries vital (= "life-giving") and support them so generously. It’s common to romanticize difficult economic times: “We were poor, but us kids never knew it.” The implication can be “Poverty is good for character, and I turned out alright didn’t I?” Caring for the poor and distressed can seem optional to life as a Christian. Surely there are other social service agencies who can do more and do it better than we can. And actually, there can be truth in all of those statements, just not a whole truth. Caring for others isn’t just life-giving and life-saving to them, but also to US!

In these weeks of Epiphany, we hear the stories of Jesus’ call to the disciples, “Follow me.” Immediately, the Gospel of Mark says, following Jesus means walking among the sick he healed, eating with the sinners he forgave, sitting with crowds hungry for food for their bellies and the soul as he fed them. You can’t disconnect Jesus’ call to follow from where and among whom Jesus walked. I Want Jesus to Walk with Me goes the old hymn. But do we want to walk where JESUS walks? Of course there are other agencies who care for the sick and poor in our day, and I keep a file so that I can make good referrals to people. There is something essential, however, to the nature of being in Christ and being the Church that would diminish us if we neglected those who are needy in body or spirit. (Just a note here, “neediness” doesn’t always have to do with bank accounts.) We who gather around the real Wonder Bread miss the point if we don’t connect it to the need for Daily Bread. We help the needy because it’s the nature of the body of Christ to be food for the world.

My memories of our times “on strike” are good, but not because there is anything good about financial hardships. They are good because my father was good. Even within what I’m sure was a time of considerable anxiety for my parents, he found ways to give us good things: homemade bread, the chili and spaghetti he enjoyed making, and his time. No less does our heavenly Father provide for us in times of anxiety, or bless us when we help others and one another through such times. That’s the wonder of the Wonder Bread that is Christ.

Pastor Betsy
February 2012

26th annual Children’s Choir

CHORALFEST

Saturday, March 3rd
4:00 P.M.
Breiel Boulevard Church
Middletown, Ohio

Guest Conductor – Amy Chivington, Ottenbein College

CTK’s Jubilate Choir is participating along with childrens choirs from the Middletown and Cincinnati area to present:

Singing the Songs of Jesus

Over 150 children from a variety of church choirs have been rehearsing music throughout the year in preparation for this event. Choirs will rehearse, eat, play, and sing together all day, culminating in the 4:00 P.M. public performance.

Come out and support CTK’s kids!!

AGAPÉ is coming...

... MAY 6th

4:00 P.M.   

Stories and the Feast

At the December and January Church Council meeting,
great appreciation was extended to ...

• Diana Blevins for her work on the SERVV sale.
• Jake Bremanis and John Kahler for their work on lighting in the sanctuary.
• Susan Fox for helping to hang the greens in the sanctuary during Advent. Thanks to the Kahlers for donating the greens and the Foxes for donating the tree.
• Linda Hill Lally for Ubi Caritas and her work with the Sinclair College Handbell Choir.
• John Kahler for repairing chairs in the sanctuary.
• The Parish Staff Relations Group.
• Christmas!! Musicians, Altar Guild, Denise for the back wall, Linda Hill Lally, and the over 400 people who came.
• Epiphany!! Carmen Brown, Laura Zajac and Denise Simpson for putting together the party, and all who participated.
• The congregation for donating a lot of food for Reach Out Lakota. The large contribution of pasta and cleaning supplies were very much appreciated.

You can download a copy of the announcement below by clicking on it.

Christ the King has been
extended a great thank you...

• Thank you so much for the many kindnesses during my recent illness - kind words, cards, meals and prayers. I felt truly lifted up knowing your care and concern. I am blessed because of you!
  Peace, Betsy S.
• Thanks to all of my Christ the King friends for all of the cards, prayers and meals as I continue to recover from a stroke.
  I love you all! -Shirley S.
• Our most sincere thanks to our CtK family for the cards, condolences on Lord Teach Us to Pray and Facebook, plus the personal telephone calls extended to us upon the death of Harold’s sister, Nancy. It meant so very much to us. -Harold and Joan R.

We’ve been talking about “Core Values”...

    among the leadership and around Christ the King this year. Now, the phrase “Core Values” isn’t in the Bible. In fact, I notice a lot of other business and secular institutions using the same phrase. Usually I have something of an allergic response to the Church taking up the fashionable language of the moment from the marketplace. It’s here today, and old fogey tomorrow. Back in the ‘80’s you had to have a mission statement or you were going to die. Then you had to have goals that passed the “SCAMP” test or you were going to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and die. Then, as mission statements began to wane, you had to have branding or you were going to wither on the vine from lack of recognition. I look at all of these efforts as attempts to transform and inspire an organization to move from Point A to Point B. There are bits of truth in all of them. But I’m a skeptic, and Jesus didn’t work that way. Go get your Bible and keep reading. Jesus would be considered pretty much a failure by all these measures. Mission statement: See Luke 4. (Look it up!) Or maybe even Matthew 12:15-21. Branding: The name of Jesus. Or the Cross. (I Corinthians 5:49, Mark 8:34, Matthew 10:38) Ok, very well recognized, but who really wants to join him on one, even if you can make it pretty on a tattoo? Goals: Check out Matthew 4:19-20. What’s more, Jesus promises that if we do all these things we WILL die, just as he did. (Mark 10:35-39, Matt 20:20-23)

So why the talk about Core Values? Because this is one place where I think the world is taking some pages out of our manual. I think people and organizations have been struggling to anchor themselves in some kind of meaning and purpose in the last decade. Many things we thought to be secure and trustworthy have been shaken to the core in the last decade, including the Church and religion as a whole. In the 16th century, when Martin Luther and the Reformers in Europe were working to move the Church from point A to point B, they wrote confessional statements about their essential core beliefs and teachings. Under the vows of my ordination, I promised to teach and preach consistently with those statements as they reflect the Gospel. When the world is shaking, we look to the ground to see what our feet are standing on. (Does the hymn “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” come to mind?)

You’re going to be seeing our Core Values statement showing up in all kinds of places. I want you to notice something very important. Very important in a Lutheran way. Each statement in our core values begins with God’s work, not our own. Core values aren’t the sum of correct ideas we have about God that will make us into a successful church. If our feet are standing on anything secure at all, it will not be on our own good ideas, hard work, or well-expressed intentions. It will be on Jesus, whom we know and trust to be the Christ, the one who has shown us God’s own heart. The one who didn’t count on mere success as a measure of his worth or ours, but was willing to die to his own ambition, even death on a cross, to make God’s heart known to us. The one who asks us to follow that act with our own crosses.

I’m going to continue writing about the Core Values, one of the statements each month. I’ll show you some of the ways we are living them out, and some possibilities for how they may be calling us to the future. In ten years, the term “Core Values” might be passé in secular speech. But I don’t think the work of living them out will be finished by any means, nor do I think they will magically transform us into something else. I do think they will serve us as we continue the never finished work of living out our baptism. And occasionally they will be the gentle tug of an anchor reminding us of who we are as God’s Work. “Baptism takes a few minutes to perform; and a lifetime to complete.” Martin Luther

Peace,
Pastor Betsy
October 2011

We’ve been talking about “Core Values”

God's Gifts: God, in the work of the Holy Spirit, ...

Our Response: We share a common life ...

One morning after Logos these mysterious tiny signs showed up, scattered through the building. Some of the placements were especially humorous. Did you happen to see any of them? “Surely God is in this place…” It seems so obvious, being in a church and all. If God is not here, then where? It’s the second part that gets me though: “…and I did not know it.”** How could it be possible for us to not know God is here, in this place? How do we know it, so surely? The mysterious tiny signs made me think. I’ve left them up, hoping they will make you think too.

In the first CtK core value, we proclaim “God is in this place” by looking to the signs where God has already promised to be known through the work of the Holy Spirit: gathering in fellowship (wherever two or three are gathered in my name….) working together in mission (whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me….) in Bread and Wine (in remembrance of me…) Water (in baptism we remember in that big long prayer all the ways God has rescued God’s people through water), in the forgiveness of sins (Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive…) and in the hearing of God’s Word. We gather as a worshipping community because that’s the work of the Holy Spirit—to gather people. This core value makes a pretty bold statement in this world. It declares “Surely God is in this place.” Not because we “do worship right.” Not because we “do leadership/stewardship/fill-in-the-blank/right.” God is in this place because God’s work calls us into a common life, one we share with one another and with the world. And yes, that means worship. It’s our main event. It’s where we come to experience God is with us. If you ask me “Can a person be Christian and not be gathered into worship with others?” (Notice I did NOT say “be a member”) I would have to say no. And I have probably just stepped on a lot of toes. It’s okay if I make you think. God isn’t just an idea you have some profound or not so profound thoughts about. God is always seeking us in relationship, and gathering us in relationship to others and the world. When God is present, doing God’s work, people get gathered, step into the presence of Word, Water, Bread and Wine, with one another, and people get sent.

Because I say “God is in this place” doesn’t mean that God is in no other place. In fact, I think the fun is just beginning. What if the mysterious little notes from Logos appeared in other places in your world? The place where your family eats? The mirror where you make yourself presentable? The school bus you travel in? The grocery cart when you go shopping? The splash screen on your computer at work? In all these places, what does it mean to say “Surely, God is in this place and I did not know it?” In prison? In homeless shelters? In nursing homes and funeral homes? On I-75 or I-71? It means that we do what we do in THIS place where God chooses to be made known, and what we do here sends out OUT THERE to places we can hardly imagine or rarely think about God being present.

Thanks Logos kids! You made me think!
Pastor Betsy
November 2011

**Of course, the context for this statement is Genesis 28:16. (Look it up!) Jacob has a dream while laying his head on a rock (no wonder he was dreaming) at Bethel.