In lieu of a Top Five Tuesday (or Sermon Rewind Monday), I give you Sunday's Sing Spiritually worship gathering from Good Shepherd. Sing Spiritually was the culmination of Wake Up Call and was noteworthy for a number of reasons:

• Instead of a sermon, we had a guided experience of singing & teaching, scripted and filmed by Chris Macedo and narrated by Chris Thayer.
• The guided experience drilled down into John Wesley's Directions Singing from the United Methodist Hymnal.
• Yes. At Good Shepherd, the words "John Wesley" and "United Methodist Hymnal" dominated the worship hour.
• The video teaching portion starts at 11:50 on the link.
• I sing my first ever solo at Good Shepherd.  That's at the 30:50 mark.

https://vimeo.com/181400880    

I love it when a series takes me by surprise. And Wake Up Call has done just that. People have resonated with the calls to ministry, the invitations to community, and the urging to awaken to the ongoing power and ministry of the Holy Spirit. And then it concludes Sunday by exploring and experiencing the intersections between the Holy Spirit and congregational worship. We're going to do what we are teaching. And who knows?  The name John Wesley might even pop up a time or two.  For real. Sunday. 8:30, 10, 11:30 on Moss. 10, 11:30 on Zoar. 11:30 Latino.

 

Reaching into my bookcase recently, I was startled to pull out these two gems that helped move me to United Methodist ministry.  I honestly thought I had loaned them out to someone who neglected to return them . . . but there they were, right where I had left them in my bookcase. Albert Outler (1908 - 1989) taught theology at SMU -- the same university where, hello!, my father taught law -- attended faculty parties at our home on Rosedale Ave (I was nine and had no idea I was in the presence of a Methodist legend), and was likely the most influential figure in the chain of events that led to the birth of the United Methodist Church in 1968. I came across these two little books in the late 80s as I was preparing to head to Asbury Seminary, and both helped me see the genius of the early Methodist movement. Outler's thinking and writing gave me confidence that I could be both Methodist and evangelical; both innovative and denominational; both anchored in history and impacting the present. My favorite quote from either book is this one on loving God from page 84 of Theology In The Wesleyan Spirit: [Loving God] is , rather, an awareness of our radical dependence upon God's grace and our gladness that this is the truth about our lives. I can't tell you how many times through the years that phrase radical dependence coupled with our gladness has entered my mind. I'm so glad, then, that these treasures I once thought lost have now been found.  

On Sunday evening, we celebrated the outdoor baptism of some of our favorite Good Shepherd people. We explained to the families, friends, and supporters that baptism is the entire Easter weekend in an instant:  dying with Christ, buried in death, and then, gloriously, united with him in resurrection.  Paul says it this way in Romans 6:3-5:

³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. So here are some of the more compelling moments from that "Easter-Weekend-In-A-Moment" celebration:   5.  With a woman from Colombia (in addition to another woman from Liberia):   4.  With a young woman I have known since her birth (!).   3.  Celebrating a man making pivotal life decisions.   2.  A young woman whose father helped her go public by getting wet.   1.  And a young girl whose parents I know well and who herself began attending this church while a toddler.