An apple a day...

Members of Journey and St. Andrew's church school bob for apples and enjoy Halloween fun at party and bonfire Saturday night outside the parish hall.

Halloween party this Saturday, Oct. 27, 6 pm

The church school teachers are holding a Halloween party on October 27th. They promise games, food and fun starting at 6 pm until 8 pm at St. Andrew's.

From Tonja Banning:

We are looking for donations of apples, hot dogs, candy, marshmallows, graham crackers, juice boxes, chips, beer and wine. We are also in need of Halloween decorations such as spider webs, signs and tombstones. If the decorations are your personal items these will be returned to you before Halloween.

If you have any questions, call Tonja Banning 288-4528

This is a church wide event. Please invite your friends and neighbors.

Wrestling with God

The artwork (left) created by Olivia Hopkins (Sharpie on paper) at Journey tonight illustrates a painful moment in her life. We discussed the role of prayer in moments when we are hurt, frustrated, confused (see Aaron Huggins' sketch below) or angry. It is in these moments when we sometimes struggle with God--maybe not physically like Jacob, but struggle nonetheless.

Confusion by Aaron Huggins

Tonight's Journey Scripture
Genesis 32: 22-30

Jacob wrestles with God

22 The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
26 Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’
27 So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’
28 Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’
29 Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’

= = = = =

It is tempting to give up when faced with what seems like the overwhelming task of living as God wants us to live. Remember Chase's struggle with guilt and forgiveness? Ellen's anger toward God over the loss of her neighbors? In moments like these, it is important to persevere in faith, confident that the God who calls you to faithfulness is the same God who wants you to succeed, the same God who empowers you.

Video: Pain, Agony, Victory

Video Produced by Tom Atwood
Photographs by Andy Thomas

This video is a series of photographs of EHS cross-country runners, including Journey members Devon Dudding, Riley Atwood, and Ellen Atwood. The photos were taken by Andy Thomas at meets this fall. As I looked through hundreds of Andy's photos I was struck by the pain in many of his pictures. The agony is evident on the faces of cross-country runners, especially as they near the end of a race, battling for position, or at least for a faster time. Pain is definitely part of Andy's photographs. Pain is sometimes part of life. It is also part of running, and in cross country, often a part of training, and of victory.

--Tom Atwood

Judgment House

Duane Douglas (Adam's dad) is taking some of the kids from church school to "Judgment House" at Maryville Baptist Church, and wants to know if any members of Journey are interested in going. A brief description and link to the Judgment House website are included below. Duane plans to go on Friday evening, October 19 (although Sunday afternoon, October 21 at 3 pm is another possibility).

Take a look at the description below, and let me know--by email or by leaving a comment below--if you would like to go. If so, we will take some time at Journey to discuss Judgment House, evangelism, hell, etc.

From Duane:

Here is a link that explains Judgment House. It is a National evangelical ministry: Judgment House.

Judgment House is a true-to-life drama, played out in a series of rooms, that tells the story of the lives of several teenagers. See what happens after death to those who accepted Christ and those who rejected him. This unique alternative to Halloween is being presented October 17-31. This year's title is Web of Lies and is about teens who get mixed up in chat rooms.

Let me know if you want to go. Thanks!

Learning to trust

Members of Journey lead each other blindfolded on a "trust walk" around St. Andrew's.

Pizza (as usual), but this time outside.

Church divide over gays has a global audience

LIGHTNING ROD: In 2003, V. Gene Robinson, a gay Episcopal priest, was consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire. The move deepened the rift between liberal and conservative church members.

By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
8:54 PM PDT, October 13, 2007

As Episcopalians and Anglicans wait to see if their fractious global fellowship will splinter or hold together in a long-running conflict over homosexuality and the Bible, other denominations are watching nervously.

The same or related issues are roiling many denominations, especially such mainline Protestant churches as Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists. And many church leaders and scholars predict that the way these questions play out in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion will hold lessons for them all.

"The struggle going on inside the Anglican Communion. . . is not peculiar to Anglicanism," Sister Joan Chittister, a Roman Catholic nun, wrote in a recent column in the National Catholic Reporter newspaper. "The issue is in the air we breathe. The Anglicans simply got there earlier than most."

Conservative Judaism has debated the issue as well, but the conflict is especially pronounced among Protestant churches. Said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: "They know it's going to happen to them too."

Across faith groups, the controversies revolve broadly around homosexuality: whether to allow openly gay and lesbian clergy or bishops and whether to provide official recognition to the unions of same-sex couples. But fundamentally, the debate involves questions of scriptural interpretation and whether the Bible's teachings are to be seen as unchanging or in cultural and historical context.

The issues are not new. In many American Protestant denominations, the dispute has been simmering for about 30 years, longer than the same groups' now largely resolved disagreements over ordination for women.

But in recent years, vocal minorities on both ends of the theological spectrum -- religious traditionalists on one side, gay religious groups and supporters on the other -- have become less inclined to search for middle ground.

Gay and gay-friendly pastors have been tried in church courts, and breakaway parishes and parent churches have fought legal battles over property. The national conventions of several denominations have taken up the topic again and again.

"On both sides of the question, there's really no willingness at this point to compromise," said the Rev. Jay Johnson, professor of theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and senior research director at its Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry. "This isn't something that's negotiable."

At the center of the storm is the Episcopal Church. With 2.3 million members, the church is dwarfed by many other U.S. denominations, but its wealth and political prominence -- one in four U.S. presidents has been Episcopalian -- have long given it an outsized influence in the life of the nation.

The church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, a 77-million-member fellowship that is the world's third-largest Christian denomination. Theological conservatives are a minority in the Episcopal Church, but a large and growing majority among Anglicans worldwide.

The conflict between liberal and conservative church members in the U.S. and abroad escalated in 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Tensions increased last year when the American church elected a woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori, as presiding bishop.

In February, the communion's top leaders, known as primates, gave the Episcopal Church what many considered an ultimatum: to state clearly, by Sept. 30, that it would stop consecrating openly gay bishops and bar official blessings of same-sex couples.

At a meeting in New Orleans just before the deadline, Episcopal bishops crafted a careful statement, trying, several said later, to ease the primates' concerns and remain true to the Episcopal Church's long-held policy of inclusion for gays and lesbians.

In the end, the bishops essentially agreed to think twice before consecrating additional gay bishops, saying they would exercise restraint in such decisions. They also promised, for now, not to approve an official prayer service for blessing gay couples.

In an open letter sent Tuesday to the church's gay and lesbian members, Robinson described the church as being "not of one mind, but struggling to be of one heart."

Alluding to the human toll exacted by the continuing debate, he also asked gay and lesbian church members to pray for him in "this painful meantime."

Also this month, an advisory panel to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion's spiritual leader, said the Episcopal bishops had met the primates' requirements. Williams has asked the primates, leaders of the communion's 38 national and regional churches, to respond by the end of the month.

Yet dissident Anglican traditionalists in the United States have moved ahead with plans to create an alternative to the Episcopal Church. Leaders representing more than a dozen conservative groups met in Pittsburgh in September and announced that they would eventually seek recognition as the true Anglican representative in North America.

Many conservatives say it is the Episcopal Church and its liberal leaders that have departed from traditional Anglicanism.

"We've not left," said Bishop Martyn Minns, who leads one network of dissident U.S. parishes and attended the Pittsburgh meeting. "They've left us. They've embraced new teaching, a new understanding of biblical authority, the role of Christ in the church."

Many of those who took part in Pittsburgh have aligned themselves with conservative Anglican bishops overseas, including the archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, and of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi.

Both archbishops are expanding their U.S. networks. On Saturday, two bishops affiliated with Orombi's Anglican Church of Uganda presided at the ordinations of two priests and a deacon at a dissident Newport Beach congregation, St. James Church. And Minns, who leads Akinola's breakaway group, will ordain a priest and 10 deacons this week in Virginia.

Underlying some of the conflict, religious scholars say, is a dramatic shift in power to nations of the developing world. Akinola's Church of Nigeria, for example, has 17 million members, making it second only to the Church of England within the communion.

African Christian churches, which are often competing with Islam for adherents, are often very conservative on questions of family and sexuality, said Philip Jenkins, professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University.

The idea of same-sex unions is relatively new even in the West, Jenkins said, and "Nigerians and other Anglicans resent being told they need to change their beliefs and go along."

But as the conflict plays out, more is at stake than the future of the Episcopal Church. Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians, among others, all have their own versions of the debate about the role of gays in religious life and whether scriptural texts should be considered sacred and fixed, or evolving. In May, bishops of the United Methodist Church decided to keep intact a policy adopted in 1972 that describes homosexual activity as "incompatible with Christian teaching." The issue is considered likely to surface again when the church's top policymaking body meets next year.

In August, after an emotional debate, a national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to urge its bishops to refrain from defrocking gay and lesbian ministers in committed relationships, but rejected measures that would have allowed the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy. The assembly voted to defer proposals on ordaining gays and same-sex blessings to a task force that is expected to issue a statement on sexuality next year.

Bradley Schmeling is at the center of the Evangelical Lutheran debate. The pastor of an Atlanta congregation, Schmeling was removed from the Lutheran clergy roster in June after he told his bishop that he had entered into a relationship with another man. Despite Schmeling's church trial and removal from the list of approved clergy, his congregation has chosen to keep him as its pastor.

Schmeling said he was disappointed the assembly did not change its policy on gay clergy but called the resolution on restraint a significant step. "What it means for gay and lesbian pastors all across the country is that they can be a little less afraid now that the church will file charges," he said.

Judaism's Conservative Movement has addressed similar issues. Last December, a rabbinical law panel in New York adopted contrasting opinions that essentially allowed individual synagogues to decide whether to ordain gay rabbis or allow same-sex commitment ceremonies.

As devout people on both sides of the theological chasm struggle over homosexuality, some scholars said the issue has proved the most intractable for American churches since slavery fractured many of the same denominations in the 19th century. Most, apart from the Southern Baptist Convention, eventually reunited.

The question, said the Pew Forum's John C. Green, is whether the current battle will split the denominations as well. "In terms of potential consequences, this is very much a civil war, too," he said.

rebecca.trounson@latimes.com

Faith (or, If Trees Had Feet)

In case you can't figure out what is happening in the drawing above, I'll tell you: it is a tree running (yes, running) to plant itself in the sea. What does that have to do with faith? What does that have to do with anything? To find out, you will need to come to Journey tonight. Bring your blindfolds!

Have faith, all will be made clear.

We will also talk about something called "awfulizing." Also known as "catastrophizing." It's when someone always expects the worst out of life. It is what Chinese poet Lan Se's poem "Christmas" is all about. (Although, his poem--below--could also be titled, "If something can go wrong, it will!")

Christmas
by Lan Se

I always feel that
the letter slipped into the mailbox
will never reach its destination
The bicycle parked by the side of the street
will be stolen by someone
The pressure cooker in my hands
will immediately explode
The TV broadcasting the soccer match
will break down
If I bump into something
Of course I will get a concussion
If she doesn't come on this bus
I'll be left alone in the world

Why should a mature man bear
such heavy burdens
on his shoulders?


Journey Scripture
Luke 17:5-10

5 The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’
6 The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you.
7 ‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”?
8 Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”?
9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?
10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!” ’