Prayer of the Week
Epiphany 2

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever, Amen.

Fresh on the heals of Advent, Ephiphany reveals the nature, character and mission of Jesus. And as this prayer reminds us Jesus isn't just revealed to the world - He's the revealer. The star that led the shepherd-kings to Jesus is just the first glimmer of light of the new day and a new world. The Gospel of John gets right to it, In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4-5)

This is the good news. But it's also comes with a stark reminder that the light shines in the darkness, the darkness we all know so well. The first words we hear God saying in Genesis are "Let there be Light." Not long after that, Adam and Eve are retreating into the dark. And thus the story begins, God bringing light, God's image bearers retreating into the dark. And so by the time Jesus comes on the scene John makes this very clear: Jesus is the revealer, we are the concealers. Jesus brings light, we retreat to the dark.

But, alas, darkness does not overcome the light, the light shines in the dark and overcomes it. That's how you get people who so easily retreat to the dark shining with the radiance of Christ's glory. At creation God pushes the chaos and the darkness away with his light creating a new world. At Epiphany, God does the same thing. He pushes the darkness away with the light of His Son Jesus, creating a new world and a new people.

So when we pray that we may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, it's a prayer that acknowledges the reality of darkness. We acknowledge that we hide from God, we hide from ourselves, we hide from our physical realities, and we hide from one another. But we proclaim our hope that the light of Christ overcomes the darkness. No matter what that darkness is. And not only does it overcome the darkness, the light of Christ overcomes us and shines through us, radiating Christ's glory.

Prayer for Epiphany Sunday
O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

It seems like every year having been worn out by the Christmas season and now stressed out by the New Year's goals and resolutions I stumble across Epiphany. And every year it's a happy discovery. It's easy to forget about Epiphany in light of Christmas, but we ought to give our attention to it.

Epiphany is the celebration that God leads us to the very places we need to go. The shepherd-kings didn't just stumble across Jesus in a manger, they were lead there by the star. And that's always been the case, God's people always need leading. We're not very good at just stumbling across God's plan for the cosmos. So whether it was pillars of clouds by day or pillars of fire by night, or the sounds of trumpets blaring, or the frightening sight of angels appearing to unsuspecting people, God not only tells people to go he then shows them the way.

This is welcome news for us in Brooklyn. With the continued search for a place to worship for the Park Slope congregation and the eager anticipation of Christ Church Clinton Hill getting started this Sunday, and the thousand of unexpected surprises that await us this year it's not New Year's resolutions that bring hope and comfort, but the promise that God will lead us just like he has always done.

And so this prayer is a good one to start the New Year. God lead us. Not to our own goals nor to our own personal private agendas, but first lead us to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face.

Happy Epiphany.

Image from Fine Art America.

On Sunday evening, January 8th, 2012 Christ Church Clinton Hill will begin weekly worship. Please join us in giving thanks to God for our newest congregation and if you're in the area please join us for worship. You can click here for details.

In May of 2007 my wife and I went through church planting assessment with our great friends and fellow Brooklynites, John and Kathy Sweet. At the time I was an Assistant Pastor at Resurrection and John was an Assistant Pastor at Park Slope. And during this assessment I remember talking about the risks inherent in church planting and I remember feeling queezy.

But I also remember John and Kathy Sweet moving through assessment not only talking about the risk but also embracing it. At that time, John was talking about planting the next congregation in a few different neighborhoods and trying to convince me to go along with him. Well, not long after assessment our paths within our network diverged. Our church was growing and we needed an Executive Pastor, so I took on that role. But John and Kathy moved forward with their vision and they took a risk, and two years after going through assessment John planted our third congregation, Flatbush Community Church.

Even though our paths had diverged it turns out I still went with him. Flatbush was the closest congregation to our neighborhood, and my wife and I loved the vision so Flatbush became our church. And with all the risk and all the chaos that comes with a new congregation, we loved it. And so did the the rest of the Flatbush congregation. But it was still a risk. And the thing about risks is that sometimes they don’t work out.

Flatbush Community Church had to close this past August. We ran out of money. That’s it. There’s noone really to blame. It wasn't from lack of effort, prayer, or generosity from the congregation or outside supporters. It was a small church with big hopes that needed more time, but time takes money and money is what Flatbush didn’t have.

So all that talk about risk that made me so queezy back in 2007 came to fruition a few months ago and now our friends are gone, Flatbush no longer worships together, and needless to say, I still have that uneasy feeling in my gut. And yet we all move forward. We in Brooklyn are about to plant another congregation, and some church is about to land a great pastor.

But even as we move forward I don't want to forget Flatbush and I’m grateful that my experience there will make it hard to do that. I’m most grateful that John and Kathy were willing to take the risk. I wouldn’t have done it. But then again I wouldn’t have so eagerly given up a kidney to a fellow parishioner. But John did. I wouldn’t have so easily jumped out of bed at 1 AM to drive the streets of Brooklyn looking for a kid from my church. But John did. I wouldn’t have joyfully tackled the endless laundry list of responsibilities that come with being a solo pastor of a church plant in an urban neighborhood. But John did. And so now maybe I will.

If you would have told me in May 2007 that John and Kathy were beginning a journey that would mean them leaving our network 4 years later I'd have done my best to stop the process. But thankfully, it wasn't up to me. Living in God's Kingdom means counting the cost and taking risks. And that's the story of Flatbush Community Church. It was a risk worth taking.

So to John and Kathy, the members of Flatbush, and to those of you who prayed for and supported our congregation, thanks for taking the risk.

There are two things you can't escape in the summertime in New York City: the heat and the noise. I don't ever get used to the heat (the window units don't do the job) but I do get used to the noise. And tuning out the noise is no small feat because there is an unending symphony happening on the streets: the car alarms, the sirens, the horns, the kids on their scooters, the airplanes on final approach, the music from the ice cream truck, the one sided cell phone conversations, and the thumping car stereos, are just a few of the instruments. I've become so familiar with this symphony that it is only when the orchestra pauses in unison, creating a brief moment of "silence" (only a half note rest), that I notice something's amiss.

But no matter how familiar I become with this music there is always one instrument breaks through the ambient street noise: church bells.

Throughout Brooklyn these old churches still ring their church bells. I'm not sure if they're on a weekly schedule or only ring on special occasions but I hear them and they seem to carry through the air with more weight than the rest of the noise. The reason I can hear them is not because they are louder than the other sounds (in fact they're not nearly as loud as the other street instruments) but because they're more beautiful. The church bells don't just ring, they play old hymns and send a beautiful melody permeating through the chaotic noise of the rest of the world.

I suppose in this city as well in other places around the world church bells are slowly leaving the orchestra of the streets. When was the last time you saw a new church building with a bell tower? It doesn't happen anymore.

But church bells have something to teach the church today. They teach us how to announce the good news of Jesus to the rest of the world. They let the neighborhood know that the church is still there, and that Jesus is still at work in the midst of the noisy chaos.

But its the 'how' that's just as important as the 'what'. How do the church bells stand out? How does the church get a voice in the midst of all the noise? How can our gospel message be heard by those around us? The only way the good news of Jesus is going to be heard is by being the most beautiful message being lived out in our neighborhoods. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the most beautiful story that's ever been told, and as we live as Jesus' faithful followers showing his love to the world we too are called to be part of this beautiful story. And what will make it attractive to others is the beauty of Jesus, not how loud we can talk about him. I hope the church bells aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I need them to remind me of how I'm supposed to talk and live.

I hear a car alarm ringing on my street, so I'm gonna wait and listen for the church bells, hopefully it will be "Be Thou My Vision" as I heard last week...now that's beautiful.

This recent New York Times article on the increase in clergy experiencing burnout got me thinking about how pastors can survive and thrive in ministry for the long haul. If you've been around the church for any length of time that probably means you have some sad stories about pastors burning out in all sorts of ways. And as BCP brings on pastoral interns and introduces them to the world of pastoral ministry we want to set them on a trajectory that addresses and prevents burnout down the road.

The remedy to burnout in clergy, according to the NYT, is more time off. And not simply more time off, but better boundaries between church activities and personal activities which can so easily become blurred. But I think this article falls short in its remedy because it misdiagnosed the disease. Exhaustion and unclear boundaries are symptoms of a bigger problem - isolation. At the heart of so many stories about pastors leaving because of scandal, exhaustion, or apathy you'll most likely find a pastor in isolation. It's remarkable that with so much emphasis put on the church living as a new community and a new family a pastor can be the most isolated people in the entire church.

I was talking to a friend the other day about the advantages of being part of a network of churches and pastors who work so closely together. I rattled off the economic advantages of sharing common costs, the advantage of not having to do the same administrative work over and over with each new congregation. And then I finally got around to talking about the relational advantages: the time that is spent praying for one another, the discussion of hard pastoral issues, the books that are read, the theological questions that are batted about, the Psalms that are memorized. These are all, I hope, ways we can begin fight off isolation and ultimately burnout.

I found the NYT article depressing as it rattled off the stats for pastoral exhaustion, but only because I know they're probably pretty accurate. What does give me hope is that we in Brooklyn are far from the only people who are church planting within a local network. It's happening all over the place and I hope it will make for a generation of pastors who can stay in ministry and finish strong with healthy churches, healthy marriages, and healthy spiritual lives.

Last week BCP hosted our first short term missions team. They were a great group of students from one of our partner churches, StoneBridge Presbyterian Church. This church does such a great job of loving us and caring for us that it was no surprise to us that these students came to Brooklyn ready to work.

One of the projects they worked on was painting an iron fence that stretched along the front of an armory in Park Slope that now is home to a women's homeless shelter. There is one word that describes this project: tedious. Scraping the loose paint off a fence in 90 degree heat, and then putting another coat of paint in all the hard to reach places of a fence line may not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of ministry, at least it doesn't for me. I like ministry activities that offer a little better return on our work than helpful suggestions from passer's by about the best way to tackle such a task.But the more I watched this team faithfully go about their work the more I realized they were doing just what we wanted them to do, they were loving our neighbors.

In Mark 10, when Jesus tells us that the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves, he's calling us to paint some fences. In other words, he's calling us to the tedious jobs that take time, that offer very little in terms of reward or notoriety. Because it would be one thing if Jesus just told us to love our neighbors, but he tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we are all very concerned with the details in our own lives. Therefore to love our neighbors means to pay attention to details, to be willing to do stuff for them that is tedious and mundane, and as the students of StoneBridge taught me last week to do it joyfully.

I'm grateful that this group did such a great job of loving our neighbors in such a tangible, specific way. And I'm glad that they pictured for us the way God loves us. It turns out God is more concerned about the fence that needs painting and all the other mundane details of our own lives (and our neighbors' lives) than we often think.

I just finished reading Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places by Sharon Zukin. It's a compelling read about how the desire for authenticity has shaped several New York City neighborhoods. I'm still processing much of what I've read here, but one quote which is really an evaluation of Brooklyn has stuck with me. Zukin writes: "The new Brooklyn is different. It's a place people come to, not a place they come from, and where residents don't have a traditional, urban village way of life but are very proud of the "authenticity" of the neighborhood where they choose to live."

We talk a lot around here about having a theology of place. Actually we don't really use those words very often, but we do, in our practice and vision, hope to reflect and embody the different neighborhoods that make up Brooklyn. In other words we think that place really matters. Christianity has always been embodied on the streets, in the public square, and in living rooms. And so it matters where we live, where we shop, the neighborhood parks where we spend our free time, it all matters not just practically but theologically. Simply put, how can we love our neighbors as ourselves if we don't know who they are and what they do?

Now, if you pick up a work of systematic theology chances are you won't find a category called neighborhood right after the doctrine of the atonement of Christ. But our lives are not lived out in general and generic places. We live in a specific places and those places force us to ask questions and ignore others. Our place offers us alternative hopes for our world, for our future and we have to decide if we buy into them or not. Place really matters.

Which brings me back to this quote and the assessment that Brooklyn is a place people come to not a place they come from. If Zukin is right (and I think for the most part she is) then we have both an opportunity and a challenge before us in the next few years.

The opportunity is that people are coming to Brooklyn. To live, to work, to embody the streets, parks and neighborhoods. And there is a great need and opportunity to listen to their stories, share their love for Brooklyn and offer them a Christianity where place really does matter.

The challenge is that those people coming to Brooklyn don't have roots in Brooklyn. Maybe they're here for a few years trying it out seeing if things will work. But if they're not from here, there is no reason to stay here when the road gets rough. And the call to another place can be deafening at times. And the thing about a place like Brooklyn is that usually there is an cheaper and easier alternative somewhere else. But alongside cultivating a theology of place is a call to stay. But that's another post...

Zukin's overall assessment maybe right but there are still lots of people from Brooklyn who plan on staying in Brooklyn. They grew up here, their roots are here and there is no other place calling their name. It turns out the one's I've met have a really good theology of place. They know place matters that's why they're here, that's why they stay. So if you want to cultivate a theology of place start by talking to your neighbors who are from Brooklyn. Well, introduce yourself first and then get them talking about your street and ask them why they stay.

I had the privilege of spending two weeks in Addis, Ethiopia with our global missions partner SIM/MTW Ethiopia. Our churches have been sending folks over there for the past four years and each year I hear all sorts of great stories about the project. This year was my turn and even after several years of hearing these stories about the work it still exceeded any expectations that I had when I arrived in Ethiopia. There is so much to process and learn and I'll share more about the trip here over the next few weeks. But one story is sticking with me and I'd like to share it, and its also helping me understand the season of Lent a little more:

One of the things that mission teams do during the two weeks is provide medical clinics for the beneficiaries of the project as well as other people in the city who are in need of medical attention. Given the fact that the project is committed to serving the sickest and poorest of Addis, you can only imagine that these clinics attract some very sick people.

One doctor saw a woman who had some severe skin lesions on her face. Having never seen or diagnosed leprosy before it wasn't until he consulted with another doctor that he realized that this woman had leprosy. With a diagnoses in hand the doctor returned to his patient very nervous about giving this woman such a serious diagnosis. Such news like this would certainly make her very upset and only add to the mountain of issues this woman has in her life. But he was surprised by her reaction, because instead of being upset she was relieved. She was relieved that finally after several years of having this ailment she finally knew what was wrong, and now she could get the medicine she needed. By not having a diagnosis, doctors had been treating her leprosy with basic skin creams thinking that would heal her.

This all happened the day after our team went to an Ash Wednesday service where we received our diagnosis, from dust you came and to dust shall you return. That doesn't sound like very good news not something we should be very happy about, but its a diagnosis, finally someone telling me the truth. And I walked away with great hope that having a diagnosis I was also assured of the remedy. Looking for healing with anything other than the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is like trying to put skin cream on leprosy, it'll never work.

I'm glad that woman has her diagnosis, and I'm glad that Lent has given me mine. And I can't wait for Easter.

I began the church planting internship with Brooklyn Church Project a month ago, and there is one recurring theme that keeps coming up in my experience thus far: practicing the basics. What do I mean by practicing the basics? One of the core values of Brooklyn Church Project is the commitment to the central practice of the Christian church: corporate worship. In worship, we are devoted to the Word, prayer, and the sacraments as the means of grace for God’s people. These are the basics of Christian practice.

Peter told the early church, “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15). How do we set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts? We take hold of the means of grace: the Word, prayer, and the sacraments. In other words, we practice the basics.

One of the reasons I am taking hold of this value so quickly is because of my familiarity with the concept ofpracticing the basics in a different realm. A few years ago, I had a short stint as a high school basketball coach. I drilled my players in practicing the basics: passing, dribbling, shooting, rebounding, defense. I drilled my team in practicing the basics of team offense and team defense. I wanted the basics to become such a part of their orientation to basketball that they were ready to respond and execute well in game situations.

When the church practices the basics of the Word, prayer, and the sacraments, worship becomes such a part of their orientation to life that they are ready to respond and perform their faith well in life situations. Peter assumes that lives centered on Christ will demand questions from the watching world. Therefore, a primary focus of the church should be the practice of worship. The practice of worship enables God’s people to celebrate the gospel and thus set apart Christ as Lord in their hearts.

The recurring theme of my experience (practicing the basics) may seem too simple and too obvious. However, the simple and the obvious are good. The church has been practicing these basics throughout its history. So, we will practice the basics of worship in order that we might become a worshipping community that celebrates the gospel throughout Brooklyn.