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A Promise Takes Root! (June 17 – 21)

Christian Education News - Mon, 05/14/2012 - 10:49

This year in Vacation Church School, we’ll journey through desert and over mountain as we see how God called Abraham, Sarah, and all of their children.

Don’t miss out on an exciting week!  We’ll kick things off on Sunday, June 17th at 5pm with a cookout.

VCS itself will take place on Sunday – Thursday, from 6-8pm with nursery care for children under age 3.

Our  week together will conclude with Eucharist and feast and Eucharist on Thursday, June 21st.  Friends and neighbors are welcome to join in!

To register as a participant (children age 3 – 12), sign up here.

To register as a volunteer (youth and adults), sign up here.

Questions?  Contact Wren Blessing (919-942-3108)

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Scenes from Lent: “A devil that isn’t blue…”

Christian Education News - Thu, 05/03/2012 - 13:15

After reading Matthew 16:21-28 (http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=203065213),  our fifth and sixth graders reflected on sinful desires that draw them from the love of God (see BCP 302).

Can you read what they’ve written?

Jealousy…

Video games…

Worrying about money…

Annoying my older brother…

Holding grudges…

Fighting…

Worrying about school and grades…

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Scenes from Lent: “The Mystery of Easter”

Christian Education News - Thu, 05/03/2012 - 12:47

Thanks to Ross Perry’s handiwork, our Godly Play class had new material for “The Mystery of Easter” story this Lent.

“It takes many weeks to get ready to enter the Mystery of Easter.  Let’s look inside to see how many weeks it takes and what Lent makes when it is all put together…”

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Imagining the Body

Youth Ministry News - Tue, 03/27/2012 - 12:19

By Paul Cizek, Youth Minister

How might art teach us to see ourselves as members of Christ’s body?

Start with a $7.50 purchase from the Durham Scrap Exchange.

Consider: What are you good at?  What do you love to do?  What brings you great joy?  What’s your favorite color?  What color are you?  Are you more curvy or jagged?  Rough or smooth?

Trace a body, divide and cut-up the tracing, hand out pieces, and then cover your piece in a way which reflects who you are.

Now put the pieces back together, but not just next to each other.  Connect the pieces; join the pieces.  Don’t be shy!  You’re going to have to draw or paint on each other’s pieces.  Someone might tinker with yours.

Now step back and take a look.

What do you notice about the body?  What was it like to decorate your portion and then add it to the larger body?  What was it like joining the pieces together?

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. 

– Romans 12:4-8

This seems to be a picture of the life God is calling us into in the church.  Is this a good life?

What would the bodies look like if each piece of the body was simply checkered?  Why do you think God has made us with such a variety of gifts?

Was it comfortable integrating your piece back into the whole?  Will it be easy for us who are many and distinct to live as one?

Do we normally think of ourselves as members of Christ’s body?

“Each piece looked so weird on its own, but they don’t look weird when they’re all put together.”

Brilliant!

Is part of the challenge to seeing ourselves as members of one body the familiarity and comfort we have with thinking of ourselves as individuals?  I’m Paul – I’m myself.  That’s Stephen over there.  There’s Corrie.  That’s Michael.  What if such statements were “weird.”  What if it just made sense to think that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”

Lord, helps us see ourselves, who are many and distinct, as one body in Christ.  Cultivate in us a love for the body into which you have called us.  Amen.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

A Scientist Stops By

Youth Ministry News - Fri, 03/16/2012 - 10:30

By Paul Cizek, Youth Minister

“So who’s in a science class right now?”  All hands go up.  “What are you learning about in science class?”  Cells and cytoplasm; volcanos; egg drops from the school roof; mesosphere and stratosphere; DNA and Gregory Mendel; Physics (ugh!); evolution.  “So, what do your science classes have to do with you being a Christian.”  Nothing.  No obvious relation.  They seem totally opposite: one focuses on facts and evidence, the other on faith and belief.  Aren’t evolution and Christianity, you know… “In conflict?”  Yeah.

So, what does a science class have to do with our lives as Christians?

Our guest is JR Rigby: he’s one of the most intentional Christians I know; he’s a also a USDA scientist who studies streams and rivers in the Mississippi delta region.  Some days JR sits in the office and develops models on the computer; sometimes he plays with a long, clear-sided tank which allows him to simulate and study the effect of flowing water on different fabricated river beds; sometimes he’s out wearing rubber waders in the rivers.  At one time JR was aiming to be a musician, but JR discovered in high school and college that what was hard for his peers (math, physics) came easy for him.  Was his faith as a Christian ever in conflict with his studies?  Sure, he occasionally had professors who had a bone to pick with Christianity.  But he remembers one day asking a theology professor how a scientist could fit into the life of the church – without compromising either faith or science; the professor didn’t know, but a friendship and discerning discussion began that day.

So, what does science have to do with our lives as Christians?

For JR, his work as a scientist is an ongoing exploration of God’s creation; it’s a fascination with the streams, currents, and turbulence, which leads him to contemplate the God who created and sustains these things; it’s work which helps him respond to God’s command to humans to “tend” the creation (Gen. 2).  It’s work that – as far as JR can discern – is a faithful way to use the gifts God has given him (a mind for physics and math); it’s work that allows God’s call to all people – a call to baptism and discipleship – to ring most loud and clear in his life.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.  – Romans 12:5-6a

So JR is a scientist and the body of Christ is richer and healthier because of him.  But, what gifts has God given you?  How might God be calling you to use your gifts now and in the future?   How might God’s call ring most loud and clear in your life?  We’ll begin discerning such things in the weeks to come.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Play

Youth Ministry News - Tue, 03/06/2012 - 16:56

By Paul Cizek, Youth Minister

Play: what a gift for our EYC!

This past Sunday, Jr. and Sr. EYC met together along with their Mentors for an evening of play.  We played a Spring season game of Whiffle Ball in the parking lot, came inside to warm up with hot chocolate and tacos, and then ended the evening with a Pictionary-type game called Anticipation.  There were winners and losers: Team Two rounded the bases and racked up many runs while Team One struggled to get a runner to third; and though Jr. Boys and Sr. Girls were clutch when it came to Anticipation, the Sr. Guys pulled out the victory.

How wonderful when the community that eats together, worships together, and grows together as Christians has a night to kick back, laugh, and play.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Real Friends

Youth Ministry News - Thu, 03/01/2012 - 20:57

By Paul Cizek, Youth Minister

This past Sunday evening, Jr. EYC waded into the topic of friendships and forgiveness.

Have you ever been offended by a friend?  Had a fight with a friend?  Been hurt by a friend?  What happens then?  Is it over?  Does gossip erupt?  Do wounds silently fester?  And if it happens at church, how awkward to see this person week after week in our narrow halls.  Or, perhaps, maybe one of you just stops coming altogether.  Does this really happen?  Jr. EYCers could point to some concrete instances.

But what if instead of wounding, these moments became healing?  What if these moments of disillusionment were really illusion-clearing moments?  What if these moments helped us see  our friend as a sinner forgiven by Christ, and ourselves as sinners forgiven by Christ?  Might we then really mean, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”?  What if we really believed the words we prayed?  Who would we have to forgive?  Who would we have to apologize to?   Forgiving and apologizing – both really hard, our Jr. EYCers say.  Hard, no doubt, but the alternative is the end of our friendships.  Hard, no doubt, but this is the type of real friendship we’re invited to pursue in the church.

Sr. EYC then chewed on a few hearty words about friendship:

We had grown up together as boys, gone to school together, and played together.  Yet ours was not the friendship which should be between true friends, either when we were boys or at this later time.  For though they cling together, no friends are true friends  unless you, my God, bind them fast to one another through that love which is sown in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us.  Yet there was a sweetness in our friendship, mellowed by the interests we shared.

- St. Augustine, Confessions

Dear Wormwood,

I’m delighted to hear that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances – rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world… No doubt he must soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based.  I don’t think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgement of the fact… He will be silent when he ought to speak, and laugh when he ought to be silent.  He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and skeptical attitudes which are not really his.  But if you play him well, they may become his.  All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.  This is elementary.

- Your Affectionate Uncle, Screwtape

(C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters)

Did St. Augustine mean we couldn’t be friends with non-Christians?  We admitted he seemed to think some sort of friendship could exist with non-Christians (thank goodness!), but perhaps not “true friendship.”  Did Augustine have different types of friendships in mind?  Or, it was suggested, perhaps God must bind two people together but neither might be conscious that is God binding them together?  Possible, for sure, given the quote.  But now, what did “true friendship” really look like?

A few Mentors weighed-in: there are friends we’re honest with – about our lives and about theirs; there are friends whose life orientation towards God is similar to ours, so we can pray together and share our struggles and joys of living as Christians; there are friends who’s words and actions teach us to love God and love our neighbors better.  Is this what Augustine meant by “true friends”?  Do we have such friends?

And the Lewis quote seemed like the opposite: is it possible that our friendships change us in ways which are imperceptible to us and harmful?  Can friendships draw us away from the love of God and neighbor, without us noticing?  The thought struck a chord with the group.  As one youth noted, it’s like boiling a frog: toss a frog into boiling water and it jumps out, but put a frog in cold water, slowly turn up the heat, and the frog’s a goner.  “That’s horrible,” said another youth!  But that’s exactly what’s at stake!  True friends nudge us along towards life (sometimes unaware); other friends draw us away from God (sometimes unaware).  “Life and death” is no overstatement of what’s at stake in our friendships.

And this is why EYC’s tagline is “real life, real friends.”  It’s not just a succinct, clever, or hip phrase.  It’s descriptive of what we’re up to at EYC.  Not just “community” for the sake of “community,” or friends for the sake friends.  But friendships which orient us to God – that teach us to love God and our neighbor.

So, pray for us, pray with us, and perhaps even join us in this common pursuit of “real life, real friends.”

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Soft Pretzels

Cooking With the Family - Wed, 02/22/2012 - 13:26

1 package (1 T.) active dry yeast

1 1/4 cup warm water

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 1/2 cups bread flour

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, approximately

1/2 cup water

1 T. baking soda

pretzel or Kosher salt

2 T. butter, melted

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.  Combine yeast and warm water in a small bowl.  Let stand 5 minutes.  Combine yeast mixture, brown sugar, and bread flour in a large bowl.  Stir in enough flour to make a soft dough.  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  Knead until smooth (about 3 minutes).  Cover and let rest 20 minutes.  Cut the dough into 12 pieces.  Roll each piece into a 15 inch rope. Shape each rope into a pretzel shape or as desired.  Combine water and soda.  Dip each pretzel into mixture, shaking off excess water.  Place on a greased baking sheet.  Sprinkle with salt.  Bake at 475 degrees F for 6 minutes or until golden brown.  Brush with melted butter.  Serve immediately.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

What Kind of Friends?

Youth Ministry News - Mon, 02/20/2012 - 15:45

By Paul Cizek, Youth Minister

What kind of friendships is God forming among our youth at Holy Family?

Jr. EYC reflected on the school lunchroom: Who do you usually eat with and why?  Who don’t you usually eat with and why?  And, if we all went to the same school, would we be eating at the same lunch table?  You know: the vicious social dynamics of who’s in and who’s not, and the concrete ways this plays out around food.

But the stories of early Christians gave us lens to see ourselves through: thousands of strangers who became Christ followers suddenly started praying together and eating together (Acts. 2:38-47).  Strangers eating together; the ins eating with the outs; those we usually eat with eating with those we usually don’t eat with… all because they started following Jesus.  This was one picture of the early church.  Was it picture of our EYC mealtimes?  How could this challenge us?

Sr. EYC’s discussion meandered: What binds most of your friendships together?  What binds our EYC friendships together?  And, if someone from outside EYC was observing our friendships, would it be readily apparent that we were a church community?

We put on the lens of Acts 4:13-37, a story of Christian friends who prayed for each other’s boldness in a time of oppression and who sold their possessions in order to care for each other’s needs.  In some ways, we saw ourselves in the story: we pray for each other and our tithes help care for each other’s needs – or at least the needs of others.  But more so, the story seemed stranger: Do we ever feel like we’re banded together in a common struggle or even for a common cause?  Do our tithes come anywhere near the selling our own possessions?

Pray for Holy Family’s EYC as we discern what it means for us to be friends in Christ.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Friends

Youth Ministry News - Wed, 02/15/2012 - 14:20

By Paul Cizek, Youth Minister

Friends: youth are passionate about their friends. Friends they laugh with; friends they mess with; friends they adventure with; old friends with shared memories; forging new friendships. But also, friends who were with them in hard times; friends that have drifted apart; broken friendships; being betrayed or used by a “friend;” friendships on the mend… maybe.

This past Sunday night we shared these stories about friendships, and we began to wonder, What makes good friends? How do friendships start? What makes a bad friend? And, is it easier to become friends with someone you just met, or someone you’ve known for a long time?

In the weeks to come, we’ll narrow our discussion around questions like, Is it necessary that Christians have friends? and Does being a Christian affect what kind of friend you are? After all, Jesus called some of his first followers “friends” (John 15), and those stories of the early church in Acts hardly ever involve an isolated Christian, but rather brothers, sisters, and friends in Christ.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Holy Family Altar Bread

Cooking With the Family - Thu, 02/09/2012 - 12:46

4 cups whole wheat flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1 cup honey

1/2 cup pure olive or canola oil

1 1/2 cup water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. In another bowl mix oil, water, and honey. Pour liquid into flour – as much as needed to make a smooth, soft dough. You will not use all the liquid. Knead gently. Roll out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut into desired shape. (Holy Family uses circles with a 1/2 inch grid scored into the surface for easier breaking at Communion.) Bake on a lightly greased pan in a 400 degree oven 8-10 minutes or until just done.

Cool, wrap, and refrigerate or freeze. The bread should be made by one in a joyful mood. Take time, don’t rush. Do it with a smile. The Lord is watching, waiting to change this bread into His Body. Speak to Him and thank Him.

Recipe Note: If it is humid enough you can use 5 cups flour and 5 tsp. baking powder for the liquid. Grocery store whole wheat works best; health food store flour is coarser and has not worked as well (or use whole wheat pastry flour). Thin and not overcooked is best – err on the side of underdone. Baking scraps and testing them while baking is best.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Kyrie Eleison: Band-aid mercy

Children's Choir - Wed, 02/16/2011 - 14:51

Our Lenten song is a simple arrangement of the prayer “Kyrie eleison”:
Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison,
OR:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

A lot of times we hear the term “mercy” and think of clemency, like what a judge shows a criminal. Or we think of forgiveness for wrong-doing. Or we think of a movie scene with a medieval peasant begging to be spared by an overbearing lord or knight. But what about band-aids?

This week, as we begin to learn our Lenten song, I will be handing out bandages to the children. Why? Because eleison does not only mean “mercy” in the senses listed above. It comes from the same idea as healing oil. Back in the day, people treated wounds by rubbing oil into them to soften them and promote healing. (Sort of like we might use Neosporin today.) The mercy which we ask of God is a healing grace, like oil poured in a wound.

“Mercy” also has an old association with mothering, the feeling a mother has for her child. “Mercy” is often translated “steadfast love,” or “lovingkindness” as well. In the Hebrew, the word for mercy is meant to invoke a very lasting sort of love that takes one in and does not let go, ever. Other nuances of “mercy” are rooted in these meanings.

We will talk a little about these big ideas of mercy in choir, but I encourage you do think about them and maybe talk them over at home as well. Our focus this week as we prepare for Lent will be simpler: Bandaid mercy, the grace that heals us.

For grown-ups, with our ability to abstract, healing grace can be a broad typology. The wounds of death and sin are cured by the medicine of immortality, the very presence of God among us, with us in the Eucharist to heal us. We recognize the pattern of wound and healing in lots of places in our lives, especially in Lent, when we get our annual check-up. During Lent, we see God the healer as well as how we might be sick and in need of healing. We see the lengths to which God the great physician goes to heal us, even death on the cross and rising again.

For the children this week, it is enough to know that God wants to heal us right here, right now, immediately. God’s desire to love us into health is what makes it possible for us to pray, “Lord, have mercy.”

• God’s healing grace makes us more open to healthy, loving relationships.  What does it mean to soften our hearts?
• Show your children how oil makes their skin softer.
• How is it healing to know that God will not let you go?
• Talk to your children about their baptisms, when they were anointed as the priest said, “___, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  This Lent, try to remind them that this is what we mean when we say “mercy.”

Categories: Ministry Blogs

We return in the season of Light

Children's Choir - Mon, 01/10/2011 - 15:56

Choir rehearsals resume this Wednesday, January 12, at 5:30pm in the choir room. To get into the spirit of the season of Epiphany, we will start off this semester singing, “This Little Light of Mine.”  From the light of the star to the light of the Transfiguration, Epiphany sheds brightness on what God was up to when He became human in Jesus.  Join us to let your light shine!

Children’s choir is open to all children of singing age, roughly preK-5th grade.  We meet Wednesdays from 5:30-6:15pm.

Categories: Ministry Blogs

Call and Response

Children's Choir - Sat, 12/11/2010 - 12:53

Every week we practice, “Call and Response.” One person speaks or sings, and the other person or persons reply in song or speech. We start out the church service this way.
Call: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Response: And blessed be His kingdom, now and forever. Amen.

We continue with the amens, and we really get going for the Peace.
Call: The peace of the Lord be always with you.
Response: And also with you.
The response at the peace is not just words, but also actions. We shake hands, hug or kiss, nod, and smile at those around us as we show them Christ’s peace. Then there is the big moment of action, where the caller and responder hunker down for some serious work.
Call: The Lord be with you.
Response: And also with you.
Call: Lift up your hearts.
Response: We lift them to the Lord.
Call: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Response: It is right to give him thanks and praise.
Suddenly what started as a few words back and forth and broke into action at the peace has come into its fullness. God calls to us by giving us good gifts, bread, wine, hearts. We respond by saying thanks. We call out to God, lift up our hearts, bread, and wine, and God gives us Himself in response.

We go back and forth with God, in words and actions, God giving, us giving back, God giving back even better than before. In Advent, all of the scriptures and hymns show us some of this story. We hear God saying to us through prophets, through John, through songs and prayers, “My people whom I have called, I have heard your call to me. I am on my way right now.” God is coming to be with us! The call goes out, waking us up to be ready to respond.

Our calls to God may happen when we see or experience hurt in the world. God comes to us in response. Our calls to God may be calls of rejoicing, when we see or experience good in the world. God comes to us in response. This week’s hymn takes us to the verge, lets us peek into the gifts of God, right up to the moment when we see God arriving.

This week’s hymn, “Watchman, tell us of the night,” 640 in The Hymnal 1982, follows a Call and Response pattern. Help your children notice this pattern that is so central to our worship. Help them to notice the hope in this hymn, hope that God is coming to us.

Categories: Ministry Blogs