In Remembrance of Rev. John Shute

Rev John Schute died  from a blood clot last Thursday , on February 28. John served as pastor of St. John’s Presbyterian Church from 1994 to 2001. His wife,  Janice, is in our prayers. Funeral arrangements have been made for nnext Thursday, March 7, at noon at Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church in San Antonio.A s is customary when a former pastor dies, we will place a brick in the columbarium with his name on it. This is the columbarium Rev. Schute helped create.

Rev. Schute and his wife attended St. John’s  56th anniversary celebration last year. There he encouraged the congregation to move forward with the single parent family ministry even in the face of opposition from some in the community. He reminded us of when St. John’s was planning to build a columbarium and the fuss that was raised by some Meyeland residents. The church went forward anyway and the result is a beautiful columbarium on our church property. No one in the community is even aware of its existence now and it has no effect on their lives or their property values.

So it is with the single parent family ministry. Last week an angry resident in the community sent a letter of complaint to members of the congregation. Such complaints may continue until we have finished building the beautiful duplexes on our property along West Bellfort Avenue. After they are complete and the ministry has been going for a few years, don’t be surprised if some of the loudest complainers in the neighborhood start bringing home made cookies to the residents or even inviting them over to swim in their swimming pools. That is how God works in people’s lives and brings healing to a community.

In the meantime, we honor the ministry and the memory of Rev. John Schute, and will continue his legacy of moving forward with significant new projects even in the face of opposition from a small but vocal part of the community. Although they don’t talk so loud, many residents of Meyerland and even political leaders including the mayor’s office supports our single parent family ministry. They know that when churches step up to provide services for people in need that means the city doesn’t have to bear that expense. That is why we say, “Healing Happens Here.” We are taking action to meet human needs. We don’t sit back and rely on the government for such help.

We are serious about our mission at St. John’s. Our mission is to glorify God by making disciples and meeting human needs. That is what Rev. John Schute knew and that is how he led the congregation. His particular area of emphasis was on prison ministry. He was an example to us all of faithful discipleship and following Christ even in the face of opposition. He knew that perseverance is the evidence of commitment to Christ. May the Lord be with the Schute family and with our church family as we mourn his death.

Peace,
Jon B.

Don't forget joy and laughter in discipleship! | Fresh Expressions

Messy Church founder Lucy Moore, in her latest interview with Fresh Expressions,
emphasises the importance of joy and laughter in the journey of discipleship.

Watch Lucy Moore discuss discipleship in Messy Church.

Hundreds of Messy Churches have been formed in the UK, and across the world, since the first one launched in Cowplain, Hampshire, nine years ago. Lucy says the question is increasingly being asked, 'Now what? Is Messy Church really making disciples?'

She comments,

This is a really interesting and difficult question to answer.

Messy Church congregations are starting from a different place than many who would normally be coming into some sort of discipleship process, comprising a different set of people with a different set of expectations and perhaps prejudices.

So what we've found really helpful is to think about discipleship as a process or a journey. Instead of simply asking if people have become disciples or Christians in Messy Church, we prefer to ask, 'Are they becoming disciples; are they becoming Christians?' The answer is, 'Yes, hugely,' but they are just starting from a long way back in many cases.

The result is that Messy Church is currently reassessing what discipleship involves in the way of learning.

It's not just cerebral learning, intellectual learning,

adds Lucy,

but it's also valuing the non-formal learning and the social learning which are hugely powerful in Messy Church and a crucial part of discipleship - whole life discipleship, not just head discipleship.

This is a long haul and it's why Messy Churches are there as church, not as events. They're there month by month by month over a period of years, carrying people through on their Christian journey and accepting that this is a very gradual process for them.

The challenge for those leading a Messy Church is to offer as many chances to encounter God as possible in the limited time span available.

I wouldn't want to undervalue what goes on through joy and fun and play in Messy Churches. I think that's actually very deep in many ways but it is probably undervalued when it comes to discipleship. We (the church) tend to value the quiet, solemn, mysterious, things and undervalue the joy and laughter and re-creation that goes on.

Lucy says Messy Church has considered devising a discipleship course but the feeling at the moment is,

Not yet. If ever. If we start prescribing what discipleship should be rather than allowing people to think it through for themselves, to allow each church to discover a way that's right for those people, those families, those teams; I think we could be missing out on something exciting that God's got on offer for us. So maybe the time will come for a course, I don't think it's yet.

Paul Moore's book, Making Disciples in Messy Church – Growing faith in an all-age community, is published in March. Lucy comments,

I hope it will help people to think through the principles of it all rather than giving them ready made answers and I think that could be the catalyst that could send us off in exciting new directions as each church attempts - and fails and succeeds - with its own Messy Church. It will make progress but there will be a lot of failures along the way because this is new, this is pioneering stuff and it's not been done before. How do you grow atheists into disciples in this context as families, all ages, together? As far as I know it's not been done in quite that way before so it will be exciting to see what God's got up his sleeve for us in the next few years!

This is mobile TV

Vinson - This is mobile TV! on Vimeo http://gerd.fm/X8r1iZ  interesting startup launching at #mwc

via Gerd Leonhard ‏@gleonhard

100 Things to Watch in 2013

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2013 from JWTIntelligence

Bubbles Bursting in US Christianity

Life inside a bubble can feel complete, even dynamic, as the bubble’s surface shimmers and yet retains form.

But watch this video of a bubble bursting in slow motion: http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/bubble-burst-slow-motion/.

When the surface is breached, the bubble collapses immediately, in one case shattering into a liquid spray faster than a metal object can fall through where it used to be. What looked like a permanent structure is, in fact, uncertain, short-lived and quickly lost.

We saw a ”tech bubble” burst 13 years ago. What had seemed durable and laden with value turned out to be vapor. The “housing bubble” came next. Some think another “tech bubble” is about to burst.

The bubble I see bursting is the Christian enterprise in America. It is bursting ever-so-slowly, as in the slo-mo video, and millions of people still find life, meaning, safety and structure inside their bubbles.
But one failing congregation at a time, the surface of shimmering shape is being breached, and collapse comes quickly. Suddenly, as if overnight, the money is gone. Bills can’t be paid. Clergy are unaffordable. Young families flee or stay away. Buildings are returned to secular usage.

Perhaps most perplexing, many people discover they didn’t have much religious interest beyond keeping the building open. They hadn’t learned to rely on prayer, to see their lives as mission for God, to make decisions in the world based on Godly admonition, or to form sustainable spiritual relationships beyond bubble boundaries.

I recently wrote a newspaper column on Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise retirement. I lamented his eight years of leading the Roman Catholic Church backward. I lamented the Church’s track record of supporting injustice in order to defend the institution.

My column drew an immediate burst of rage from staunch Catholic traditionalists, who termed me “anti-Catholic” and therefore inherently wrong and unfit to write a column.

Their vehemence was so sudden and over-the-top that I wondered if a bubble was being breached. They were rising to defend something that suddenly looked vulnerable, maybe even passing away.
They wouldn’t see it that way, of course. In their eyes, the Church is built on solid rock and will last forever. Those who deal in bubbles often see reality that way. Then the bubble bursts.

In the past 50 years – a mere wink in 2,000 years of church time – Mainline Protestant churches have become a shadow of their 1950s heyday. Roman Catholic dioceses in America are closing schools, closing parishes, losing nuns and priests, and spending heavily to settle sex-abuse litigation.
Other denominations are struggling, too, such as Southern Baptists. So are megachurches once they get beyond the excitement and personal charisma of the founding pastor.

Bubble-bursting isn’t limited to whatever denomination or tradition you don’t like. Nor is it anti-Catholic (or anti-anything) to lament over it. When the wind of God’s Spirit is trapped inside bubbles, this is what happens.

The Spirit aims to roam freely over the landscape, creating what God wants created, changing lives, sending people out, showering grace on those who need grace, sending prophets to call down the greedy and self-serving,

That wind blows where it will and cannot be held for long inside any bubble, no matter how fervently some want to see that bubble as a rock-solid structure and the bubble’s shimmering surface as God’s great and eternal delight.

By Tom Ehrich