Author Archives: elizabeth.turner

A New Chapter for Wesleyan Accent

As January 2023 draws to a close, Wesleyan Accent is poised to enter a new chapter. The website first drew breath – so to speak – more than ten years ago, when Dr. Maxie Dunnam envisioned a hub of reflection and resources that would carve a distinctly Wesleyan Methodist niche online. Contributors would explore the wide realm of the Christian faith – with a distinctly Wesleyan accent.

Since that time, hundreds of pastors, professors, ministry spouses, missionaries, nonprofit directors, and writers have contributed sermons, articles, interviews, essays, poetry, and more. Contributors have shared the fruit of the labors from across a wide Wesleyan Methodist world – Nazarenes and United Methodist, AME Zion and Wesleyans, Free Methodist and AME.

From Charles Wesley hymns to youth ministry, from funeral homilies to the redemption of animal suffering, from Francis Asbury to Celtic Christianity, from intercession to racial justice, from the man lowered through a roof to be healed to centering prayer – philosophy of religion, biblical study, church history, spiritual disciplines, sermons, cultural engagement, missiology have tumbled together in a delightful celebration of the Christian faith as lived out by its opinionated, gifted, sometimes rowdy, always dedicated, often cheerful Wesleyan Methodist children.

These archives will continue to be available online, a treasure trove for the lucky person who wanders in on rainy days.

Moving into the future – as Wesleyan Methodists always do, with grace and hope – Wesleyan Accent will continue in a renewed iteration, perched in the branches of World Methodist Evangelism. Going forward, the content on Wesleyan Accent will build on the excellent work established by WME, focusing on mission, evangelism, and discipleship: a pressing calling for our hungry and hurting world.

Early in 2022, I communicated with Dr. Kim Reisman – head of WME – that I knew the time was coming when I needed to step away from managing Wesleyan Accent. Being entrusted with the platform for eight years, through domain moves, transitions, profound church crises, global crises, and cultural challenges has been a profound privilege; being entrusted with the words of its contributors no less so. Removed from the direct pressures of ministry, about a year after I watched dear colleagues and friends in ministry and the academy hit the wall after pressing through the pandemic, I sensed myself also in need of renewal.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of praying for contributors who were facing crises; of watching nervous writers find their confidence and voice; of being entrusted with the words of academics, who do not weigh their words casually. When I started as Managing Editor, I had a steep learning curve, but Maxie, always indefatigably encouraging, has been gracious and supportive from the beginning. I’ve learned more than I could’ve imagined, and even I don’t have enough words to convey the joy it’s been to work with some of the brightest, kindest, and most creative leaders I’ve ever been privileged to know.

I look forward to continuing to cheer on Wesleyan Accent and World Methodist Evangelism, and I hope you’ll explore the excellent resources they have to offer and support their ongoing endeavors.

With abundant gratitude,

Elizabeth Glass Turner

Managing Editor

The Prayer God Always Answers by Elizabeth Glass Turner

It might take time or unexpected detours, it may show up in disguise like a trick or treater at the door, but you will always find an answer from God to one particular prayer. Which kind of prayer this is reveals something important about who God is and who we are created to be. Tug on a loose thread of grace before you know what it’s connected to and where it will lead, and often you’ll find this answer to this prayer unspooling in your life. The prayer God always answers may take you where you didn’t know you needed to go.

You may find there’s work in keeping the answer; you may find areas in which growth is demanded of you as you experience the answer. You won’t always live up to the answered prayer. You may question whether the answer is really all that it first seemed. That’s alright. It’s always been so.

But in my life I’ve found God always answers one kind of prayer that my heart entrusts to God’s heart. Browse through Scripture, and you see God doing it over and over and over again.

It may take time or detours or hard work, but the prayer God always answers is the prayer asking God to bring a particular kind of person or community into your life because you recognize your need for other people.

Sometimes it’s tempting to ask God for a solution or a quick fix, when God wants to deepen your relationships with others and to answer your prayers in the healthy interdependency that comes with genuine community.

Sometimes it’s tempting to ask God to heal a particular kind of wound or to numb the pain of loneliness, when God wants you to receive the grace of presence, even if it looks different than you pictured.

Sometimes it’s tempting to ask God for strength to do it all, instead of asking God if your trust in others needs to be expanded.

When you pray and acknowledge your lack, your limitations, your learning curve, and your loneliness, God will always answer your cry for mentoring or community or help or friendship, even if it doesn’t come in the form you’re hoping for or picturing, even if it takes time, even if the circumstances are what you were trying to avoid.

If you’re grieving a gaping hole in your life where a relationship should be but is out of reach for whatever reason, God may not restore a relationship with a particular person. But God can bring into your life someone who’s a similar presence, and they will be a source of grace, growth, and comfort. If your mother abandoned you or was unavailable or absent, a relationship with her may be out of reach, but God can hear the longing of your heart and bring someone mother-ly into your life. She won’t be perfect – no mother is – but whether she’s old enough to be your Grandma or just beyond you in years like an older sister, if you see a kind of person missing in your life, start praying that God will intersect your life with embodied grace.

If you’re grieving a gaping hole in your life where a particular kind of community should be but is out of reach for whatever reason, God may not relocate you, but God can bring into your life people you may not completely realize you need. They will be a source of grace, growth, and comfort. They won’t be perfect – no one is – and you will see your own learning curves and areas for growth in new ways.

One time I sat praying for a very specific kind of small community. I was at a conference; it was a stage of life when it can be really difficult to forge new relationships, especially if you’re in a vocation like ministry when peers themselves are often far-flung or regularly relocating. Someone had been speaking on the value of a small knot of trusted friends who also seek out God’s heart. I didn’t question the value, I questioned the viability; I knew it was a good thing to want, but I could not see how it would unfold. Normally fasting isn’t my first instinct; but that day, I sat and prayed, tears streaming, as others left for lunch, telling God my heart and hurts and longing. I still can’t describe how it happened with any coherence, but by the time I left the conference, I found myself part of a small knot of kindred spirits, some casual former acquaintances, some familiar but until that conference strangers, and we had agreed to form a group together. How? I had lunch with one person, chatted with another, there might have been an introduction, maybe we decided to sit together during worship? And then the final one – I think she saw us knotted together praying during a time of prayer huddles and joined us and then that was that? I’d gone from longing but not seeing any viable avenue, to going home with a fresh set of phone numbers and friends. We still had to work at making time to connect. We’re still far-flung. We all have different points of view, backgrounds, gifts. Persisting in prayer often means you and I are aware of something good that’s missing and that we can’t orchestrate by or for ourselves.

One time when I worked in a nursing home, one of my favorite residents died. He was a rascal; mischievous; gave the social worker grey hairs. I loved him. When his kids wrote to the facility thanking us for the care we had given him, they said – “Dad had been so depressed living alone. He’s always been outgoing, and with his health he was confined to home so much. He loved living at the nursing home. He was his old self again – people to talk to. The friends he made there were so important to him.” I knew what they meant. He had loved it. Not everything about it, certainly; he made that clear. But he had friends he ate supper with every night, they shared treats from “outside” that their families had brought them. He was with others. Most people avoid or dread long-term care facilities, but his extroverted, mischievous heart found plenty of entertainment and genuine friendship there.

The prayer God always answers: your need for other people – like you, unlike you, similar to you, different than you.

That doesn’t mean that every unmarried person will be married; it doesn’t mean that every specific relationship with a specific person will be restored (sometimes they can’t or shouldn’t be).

It does mean that God who is internal community, Father Son and Holy Spirit, and who created humans for and in community, takes our longing for friendship, relationship, camaraderie, and community seriously – and joyfully.

God, I need a teacher. A mentor. A coach. An auntie in the faith.

God, I need someone who’s like a Dad or Grandpa, someone who knows Your heart.

God, I need a handful of good buddies who checks in with me, who I check in with.

God, I need a long-haul friend with whom I can meaningfully share life.

God, I need people in my life who look different than me, who have different experiences, speak different languages.

God, I need a few good prayer warriors I can turn to.

Moses needed his father-in-law’s advice; and Moses needed the people his father-in-law recommended that he entrust. Naomi and Ruth needed each other. Anna and Simeon needed to bless, and Joseph and Mary needed to witness their response to this baby. Paul needed to learn that he needed Barnabas, who was right about John Mark. Esther needed Mordecai, and Mordecai and many others needed Esther. The apostles needed the Greek widows as much as the Greek widows needed them. Mary needed Elizabeth. Saul desperately needed Ananias.

“It is not good for Human to be alone…”

These are prayers worth persisting in. Tug loose threads expectantly, be on the lookout even if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. Be wise in who you let into your heart, but trust that as you grow in self-knowledge, self-awareness, and maturity, that the Holy Spirit will collide into your day with people you didn’t expect but profoundly need. Fast from relationships that are all in your own image – a reflection of yourself. And then do the work of caring for those answers to prayer so that as you continue to grow and sharpen each other, you are tending to God’s beautifully given answers to persistent, expectant prayers.


Featured image courtesy Jeremy Yap on Unsplash.

Fight, Flight, Freeze: Holy Week Unraveled by Elizabeth Glass Turner

We work so hard to keep Holy Week well-orchestrated: bulletins pristine, lilies in place, songs rehearsed. It’s an important celebration in the life of a church – in the life of The Church; a highlight of the liturgical calendar. We should have our vestments ready, Easter baskets ready, shoes by the door, hearts rightly adorned and aligned. Ham or lamb or lemon something waiting in the refrigerator.

In the space between the eggs and the hunt, something moves, caught by peripheral vision, sensed by hyper-alert ears. It’s probably fine; you’re probably safe; but the nearly-ignored motion is unsettling. Maybe it was the quickly darting shadow of someone off to sell out their friend and meet tragedy. Maybe it was the slow-motion wave of a drawn sword slashing lethally toward the head and neck, managing only to find a subordinate’s ear. Maybe it was the flick of water from dripping fingers washed in refusal of responsibility, dried of moral imperative, patted with averted gaze while a haunted wife’s warning was ignored.

From start to end, Holy Week was a chest-thumping rush and slide and crest of adrenaline. Crazed crowds pressed, desperate for rescue – hosanna, save us, rescue us, get these occupiers out – the welcome parade had the glee of a crowd watching an existential buzzer-beater three-point shot. A patient Christ sat in cold rage braiding a whip before overturning tables, the carpenter splintering any woodwork that supported oppression. Before Pilate reached for a basin, Jesus reached for one; away from noise, people, intrusive eyes, requests – between welcome parade and death march – before the disciples scattered like chaff on the wind, one lost forever – Jesus pulled sweaty, dirty feet near and tenderly cleaned his friends’ calloused heels. Later, Jesus’ distress wrung blood from his forehead while he faced the slicing weight of darkness. Sleepy friends – ashamed to be caught off-guard? – surged with adrenaline again. The sounds of the crowds, the waving palms, the smells of the city, the sounds at the temple, the crack of a whip, the pouring of water, the breaking of bread, the breaking of fellowship, and here is Judas, friend, fellow traveler, not meeting their gaze, not looking them in the eye, not admitting he knew why the money bag always felt light. Everything unraveled.

Fight, flight, freeze – Simon reached for his sword, disciples ran and scattered. Some froze, then followed at a distance.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

It was supposed to be a victory lap, a coronation, a revolution, a vindication, a proof.

Across the street, a bent and broken palm leaf lies dusty and abandoned.

What did Judas just do? Surely not. He was one of us.

What did Simon just do? The flash of the sword, the yell, the splatter of blood-red, the ripped body; the tone of command, the severed ear fused seamlessly in place, vessels re-knit, nerves reconnected over a bloodied neck and shoulder.

The pulse doesn’t lie; words may deny the Christ, sever him from acquaintance, claim not to have cast out demons in his name. But the quickened heartbeat betrays the liar to himself. It does matter; he does know; he is known.

Everything unraveled.

Fight, flight, freeze – adrenaline surged early; nurses donned their gear. Teachers logged on to a box of squares. Chaplains held iPads, screens for goodbye.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

The beeping wouldn’t end, the oxygen alarms kept blaring, the sounds wouldn’t still. Coding, and coding, and coding again. People got testy. Pastors got yelled at. Budgets were torn up and cast aside like yesterday’s palm branch – useless now.

Everything unraveled.

But the pulse doesn’t lie; lying awake, tossing and turning, isolated and cooped up, tired but wired. What started as a wave of energy slumped into a numb blur. Out of nowhere, unneeded adrenaline burrowed up at inconvenient moments, startling at shadows instead of substance, leaving a shepherd shaking through what surely was a heart attack. No; the panic would ebb, drained weakness in its place.

Severed – not just ear from head.

Voices cried out from cities that had street-view peeks of coffee shops, parks, hospitals with patient reviews. Google Translate shifted the familiar but unknown alphabet into familiar characters: the neurosurgeon here was very good, they were helpful, I have recovered well; whether the former patient in eastern Ukraine is still well – who knows? Where concerts had rung out, air raid sirens blared with uncanny dissonance, folding 70 years like accordioned paper, bringing past to present: buildings smashed to rubble, civilians starving. Severed – the illusion of peace; the illusion of fellowship. A pastor on one side of the border pleads for support for refugees; a pastor on the other side denies their nation is responsible.

The explosions wouldn’t end, the alarms kept blaring, the sounds wouldn’t still.

Fight, flight, unraveled –

Everything, freeze.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to –

Surely not.

The numbness creeps, the slump insists: no more. More? Hasn’t it been enough? How can we bear to bear witness?

But the pulse doesn’t lie. The quickened heartbeat betrays the truth. It does matter; we do know; we are known.

Judas was undone; he tried to unravel the web that choked in around him, tried to return the money that burned a hole in his psyche. Face to face with Christ, he had splintered, shattered; later, he spilled out in a field.

(But – he tried though; tried to give the money back, take it all back, rewind, undo the damage. He couldn’t; but he wanted to. Wanting to is not for nothing.) Judas took flight, unspooling along the way like a human banner of confession.

Simon was undone; he did what zealots do, tried to use muscle and steel to defend the Creator of the universe. Maybe he was slow or the servant was fast but Jesus didn’t refasten a head, only an ear. Simon’s adrenaline was quelled by Christ – what? Why? Wasn’t it time to impose the kingdom? It was supposed to be vindication. Simon was undone; enraged by simple questions that poked at his pride. He was like a fish flopping in one of his nets, a fish out of water. He’d waited for bigger things, he’d seen the miracles, he’d collected baskets of leftovers, and now at the point of proving himself, swore at servant girls and denied he’d ever dreamed of being anything other than a fisherman.

Mary was – surely not.

Mary was –

(This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.)

Mary –

Mary knew fight, she’d fought stigma and rumors and whispers and gossip.

Mary knew flight, she’d gathered him up and with Joseph run to Egypt as refugees escaping a vindictive tyrant.

Mary – did she know freeze? Maybe; she didn’t freeze at the wedding in Cana. If she knew freeze, it wasn’t inability to respond, for her. It was frozenness; being rooted to the spot; rooted, watching her boy die, unable to –

Watching her beloved son, in whom she delighted, suffer because of soldiers who were “just doing their job.”

Mary was undone.

Like mothers before and since, undone. Like survivors who glance instinctively to smile at missing loved ones. Like children who reach for the hand that isn’t there.

Undone.

And when she ran out of clothing to rend and tear in grief, God took pity and tore the temple curtain clean in half.

The Spirit howled and churned up rock, dimmed the sun, and let Creation scream. In the shockwave, some of the dead were ransomed back, the universe reeling.

Something deep, undone.

There can be loveliness in an elegant Holy Week choreographed for worship, ultimately for celebration.

But there is no shame in a Holy Week smeared in mud, numb, ears ringing, drained, undone.

There is no shame in fight

or flight

or freeze.

There is no shame in finding that you are undone.

Something moves in the space between.

Wrap up what has died; buy the spices, pack them up. Cry, or having cried all your tears, wait in the darkness for morning. Don’t obsess over whether you should have fought instead of fled, or frozen instead of fought, or fled instead of freezing.

Something moves.

Like the dry scrape of stone against stone,

like a boulder shifted – and moved –

we are all undone.

One day at a time, one thread at a time, like a bird twisting twigs for a nest perched over a naked tomb,

hope darts

stitch by stitch.


Featured image courtesy Mel Poole via Unsplash.

Unwanted Holiness by Elizabeth Glass-Turner

As the United States screeches with discord and distrust, the people in pulpits and in pews are exhausted. Some had loved ones piloting evacuation flights out of Kabul. Others have spent long hours working in crowded ICUs, nurses or chaplains or doctors breaking down in tears. Firefighters on the West Coast have their pick of blazes incinerating once-lively trees to ash, and in some parts of the South, the power is beginning to blink back on. Who wants holiness if it looks like this?

Somewhere along the line, we get the idea that holiness requires energy. Sure, we know that sanctification is a gift of grace to be received. Naturally. Countless Christians in the Wesleyan Methodist tradition have experienced some kind of moment in which God comes to us to do something in our hearts that we are powerless to do ourselves. We know this. We know that works of piety and works of mercy – spiritual disciplines, caring for poor, broke, or incarcerated people -we know those actions don’t create holiness. They are a response to grace; they make room for the Holy Spirit to continue to work in us and through us. We know that sanctifying grace is a gift.

And yet.

It is easy to get the idea that holiness requires energy.

How will you grow if you’re not getting yourself to a Bible study or small group? How will you foster the grace of Christ at work in you if you aren’t seeking out ways to serve others, at the food pantry or through the altar guild or volunteering with, heaven help them, the junior highers?

Of course churches need volunteers.

Of course you want to grow in holiness.

But the hundreds of pastors, church leaders, professors, and chaplains I know do not feel an overabundance of energy right now. Between executive function fatigue (decision fatigue) and constantly putting out fires and choosing between making 50 percent of people angry or the other 50 percent of people angry and attempting to construct any kind of planning or scheduling with a viral variant that’s 1,200 times more transmissible than the original COVID-19 strains, there are very few pastors with the energy they think they need to be holy. There are very few nurses, doctors, or nursing home workers with energy for anything other than showing up and doing what has to be done.

Can holiness look like this?

Can holiness look like exhaustion, burnout, panic attacks, depression, crisis intervention, peace-keeping – even numbness?

Can I tell you something?

Some of the holiest people I’ve seen in the past 18 months have looked just like that. Some of the sweetest anointing has enveloped leaders who are tired, grieving, exhausted, burned out, or even numb.

You do not have to have energy to be holy.

This is something elderly people in long-term care facilities already know. It’s just something most people don’t want to have to learn personally for ourselves – because energy is power; control; agency.

And if you’re asking, dear God, how can my numb trauma be holy? then I invite you to listen to an audio version of 1 Kings 18 and 19 – when Elijah the prophet is in a showdown with the prophets of Baal. God honors Elijah and sends fire from the sky. But afterward, Elijah’s life is on the line. He is exhausted. He runs. He curls up too tired to do anything to protect himself. Fed by divine intervention, he runs more, to take shelter in the mountain of God. And God does not come to Elijah in an impersonal show of force, in crashing theophany. God gently arrives in the still whispering rustle, and Elijah is safe to pour out his heart and his heartbreak. After he does, God quietly reminds him that as alone as he feels, he is not alone. And to relieve Elijah’s burden further, he directs him to Elisha.

It seems to me that one of the most tender moments in these two chapters comes in 18:30 – “Then Elijah said to all the people, ‘Come here to me.’ They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down.” The prophets of Baal had been frantic, mutilating themselves, calling on Baal. But when it is Elijah’s turn, there is a sense that this is an act of grief, a labor of love: rebuilding what had been torn down, taking 12 stones and building an altar “in the name of the Lord.” (v. 32) What do you rebuild? You rebuild what you love. Where there is grief in the ruins, there is hope in the rebuilding. But it is manual labor: hard work, smashed fingers, bruised thumbnails, a sore back. His hands must have been so tired, his muscles strained. What a beautiful labor of love. No frantic shrieking; just the loving repair of what had been in ruins.

What an offering to give to God: smashed fingers, bruised thumbnails, a sore back – an altar that had been desecrated, repaired.

If you believe holiness requires energy, it will be easy to believe you can detect when it is you are being or acting holy. But most genuine holiness, I am convinced, accompanies your lack of awareness of it. It is accidental – incidental. It happens behind your back, when you’re not looking. It shadows you on your off-days.

There is a holiness of proximity that has nothing to do with energy.

It is proximity to Christ, and it is proximity to the overlooked people Christ loves.

You do not have to have energy to be in close proximity to the quiet warmth of Jesus Christ.

Elijah collapsed and didn’t care if he lived or died, after running away. It was God who enabled him to travel: “the journey is too much for you.” (19:7) When he reached the mountain of God – he slept. (19:9) Only after he rested, did God ask him what brought him there. Elijah’s strained brain chemistry could not detect the presence of God in the overwhelming sensory stimuli of loud sounds or shaking ground or bright light; he did not have the energy for that. So God whispered.

The holiness of proximity is standing, sitting, or lying in the safe presence of God, however you feel, however you don’t have the energy to feel.

There is also a holiness of proximity when you draw near to people others are ignoring. Mother Teresa exemplified this well. The embodiment of the Beatitudes is a sacred thing to witness. Blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the merciful. When you care for sick bodies or cry with grief-stricken loved ones, you are in the proximity of the blessed ones; you are blessed when you are merciful to them.

You do not have to have energy to be holy. Your exhaustion, your grief, your numbness – none of those things keep you from being holy. Whether or not you feel the presence of God, you are so close to the side of Christ that you shine when your back is turned, when you’re not even aware of it.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

What are you doing here, Elijah?


Featured image courtesy Marek Piwnicki via Unsplash.

Doctors & Dying: Caring for Caretakers by Elizabeth Glass-Turner

In the tug of prolonged strain, physicians, like their patients, are vulnerable. Some corners of the United States remain relatively quiet and unaffected by outbreaks of the coronavirus, Covid-19. In these areas, extra sanitizer, virtual appointments, and doctors’ office face coverings are the cue that something is happening elsewhere. But in other regions, despite the summer months, health care systems are overwhelmed; at the time of writing, Texas, Arizona, and Florida are being pummeled by significant spikes. For some cities, hospitalists have seen a steady stream of critical patients for months.

For doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, anesthesiologists – anyone who spends hours in personal protective gear, anyone who spends months caring for critical and dying patients – several dynamics are changing the way in which they encounter death. This is significant for clergy caring for burned-out parishioners; it is significant for laypeople who approach their career in medicine as a vocation; and it is significant for hospice chaplains and workers, and for hospital chaplains.

One journalist, writing on the challenges of administering last rites during a pandemic, observed:

“The Coronavirus has led the United States to the valley of the shadow of death. In just three months, a microscopic particle has laid bare human mortality. The entire nation has worked to avoid death, shutting down cities, masking faces in the streets, and isolating the dying from their loved ones in their final hours. And yet, more than 100,000 people have died, and often, died alone.

Many rituals, a guide through life’s most sacred moments, have been impossible. Children said final goodbyes to dying parents through windows or on FaceTime, if they bid farewell at all. Only rarely have religious leaders been allowed into hospitals and nursing homes. Families attend funerals on Zoom.

The country is facing a deeply personal crisis of spirit, not only of health or economics. A virus has forced a reckoning with the most intimate questions we have, questions not only about how we live, but also about how we die. About what we can control, and what we cannot. About how to name human dignity, despair and hope. And especially about how to make meaning of our final hours on this earth.

‘This major disaster is going to change our relationship to death; I’m not exactly sure how, but I am certain it will,’ Shannon Lee Dawdy, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, said. A century ago, priests were ‘answering sick calls night and day,’ one Catholic newspaper reported at the time. Now nurses and doctors, not spiritual leaders or families, are most likely to be death’s witnesses.”

In cities like Boston, priests occasionally have been allowed special clearance to administer last rites in personal protective equipment. During the early coronavirus outbreak in Italy, priests were given some freedom within pandemic protocol to visit the dying; some who offered spiritual care to coronavirus victims themselves died of it.

Meanwhile, American hospital chaplains accustomed to offering comfort through personal presence have struggled to serve patients and family members through the distance of a device screen. Last spring, many hospitals put restrictions on chaplain presence due to shortage of personal protection equipment. Other chaplains are present in hospitals and able to respond to a request for their presence if they don protective gear and follow protocol. Distanced or present in mask and scrubs, chaplains are offering support not only to patients and family members but to exhausted health care workers. One journalist writing on the changes in hospital chaplaincy noted:

“The infectious nature of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, has changed everyone’s jobs in healthcare, including chaplains. The obvious shift is the inability to physically visit patients in hospitals to be a resource to them and their families.

The subtler changes are the extent of tending to those who tend to the ill. It’s watching out for what [chaplain David] Carl describes as ‘compassion fatigue and burnout’ among healthcare workers. Because nothing is routine now in healthcare.”

One chaplain noted how fatalities took a toll on New York City doctors during the tragic spike in the city: “How do I help a nurse who is new to nursing and has walked into all this death and it’s nothing that she had ever imagined? …This is very hard because this is personal. No patient is a number. And this is a very good hospital. Our patients usually live. And to have so many of our patients not making it — it’s even hard on the seasoned doctors.”

Even experienced chaplains, who have developed routines and habitual pressure valves to let off steam from regular engagement with grief, aren’t immune from the additional strain of providing care during a pandemic. As one journalist observes, “For most hospital workers, as for so many others around the country and the world, the last couple of months have been something like a prolonged trauma. ‘We’re all living right on the cusp, in this buzzing, anxious place’ [says Reverend Kate Perry]. She’s seen hospital workers who are typically reserved, now living on the edge of panic. ‘Every patient, family, and staff is all living with the same emotions,’ she says. ‘They feel anxious and helpless and this deep sadness. And then there’s this anger.'”

Usually, hospice workers provide robust, sensitive end-of-life care for dying people, from the elderly to cancer patients to a variety of patients; occasionally, patients rally and make a partial recovery, even able to leave hospice care. Whatever the outcome, hospice caregivers and facilities excel in quietly tending to the physical needs of the dying and the emotional needs of their family members, shepherding them through the process of dying, death, and loss, answering mundane questions, being present in grief.

But with Covid-19 patients, isolation is often required to contain further spread. For some patients, their last moment to speak is right before they are sedated and placed on a ventilator, so the good-bye may come weeks before the moment of possible death. Not only that, often critical Covid patients take a quick turn for the worse, so that even if one family member is allowed to come to the hospital, they may or may not make it in time. The loss of a typical progression of dying, the loss of hospice or chaplain bedside presence, these are also fatalities of this disease. Not only are family members unmoored and chaplains frustrated at a distance, but in strained, crowded Covid units, at times doctors find themselves attempting to calm patients terrified of being intubated and dying; and as chaplains noted above, even seasoned hospitalists have been caught off guard by the sheer number of fatalities during the worst spikes.

Just like testing and treatment protocol are becoming more familiar and hopefully more efficient, as time progresses, chaplains and hospice workers will find new means of offering care to the dying. Last spring, hospice workers creatively tackled obstacles to meaningful connection in a variety of ways. Hopefully, curves will flatten in Miami, in Houston, in Tucson, relieving pressure on overtaxed hospitals and exhausted doctors; hopefully, spikes will be prevented in other states on the edge of exponential growth.

In the meantime, health care workers on the front lines of Covid outbreaks face unprecedented losses, often without the physical presence of chaplains or hospice workers to bear the brunt of witnessing death. What might be some starting places for clergy and chaplains spiritually caring for medical caretakers?

Hospice resources are extremely valuable for everyone – pastors, laypeople, and those working in medicine. If exhausted doctors are feeling the absence of hospice workers, there are still bite-sized, helpful hospice resources that can help provide a new lens with which to approach dying patients – even in unbelievably hectic times. For example, often in-home hospice nurses have short pamphlets they give to family members. While medical professionals are familiar with the basic biology of the dying process, hospice resources also frame the process of letting go and grieving. For instance, while this printable resource is primarily for families of terminally ill people, a portion of the caregivers section is relevant to frustrated specialists encountering critical patients suffering from a little-understood disease, Covid-19, still being researched: “Caregivers are often overwhelmed by the intensity and mixture of emotions they feel. These may include: Fear that you do not know the right thing to do and that you are failing as a caregiver mixed with moments of realization that you are doing the best you can and amazement that you can do as much as you are doing.” These kinds of insights can help reinforce the reality that family caregivers and doctors alike sometimes experience very similar dynamics. In other words: this response is not unusual; it is common; you are not alone. In The Family Handbook of Hospice Care, the physical toll of grief is named: “Grief can take a toll on you physically. You may lose interest or gain interest in food. You may lose weight. You may have intense dreams or disturbing sleep patterns—if you can sleep at all. You may be extremely restless, unable to concentrate or relax. Furthermore, grief can hurt: You might feel a knot in your stomach, a tightness in your throat, or a heaviness in your chest. Often grief requires more energy than you would need to chop wood. You may require lots of rest to maintain your health.” In areas hit by a surge of infections, many ICU nurses and specialists are simply – grieving; or, they would be if they had the energy to do so. Grief can be delayed, but it will come out in some form or another eventually.

Be ready for both the curve and the flattening. In the middle of a huge spike of positive cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities, few ICU nurses will have time or energy to read up on a theology of death and dying, or the problem of theodicy – how suffering can exist if there is an all-powerful, all-good God. During a crisis, there’s barely energy left over just to do laundry. The waxing and waning of relative normalcy vs an explosion of emergency can also be captured in Ignatius’ approach to seasons of life as “consolation and desolation.” If you’re a chaplain or physician in the midst of relative normalcy (or “consolation”), now is a moment to explore resources and shore up mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Now is the time to call up a pastor or professor friend and talk through hard questions; now is the time to read God on Mute. However, for doctors numb with exhaustion, forcing themselves through rote motion each day (“desolation”), you probably simply need to eat, sleep, sweat, and laugh daily. Though Ignatius was addressing Christians, some of his advice would be picked up later by recovery groups as well: in a time of desolation, followers of Christ should practice the habit of recalling God’s faithfulness in prior times of desolation; resist the temptation to see suffering as pointless; resist desolation through meditation and prayer; avoid making big decisions, “because desolation is the time of the lie—it’s not the time for sober thinking. That is, in our disheartened state, we’re more prone to be deceived”; pay attention to the spiritual insights found during desolation; and confidently look for the quick return of a season of consolation.” It can be challenging to see the possibility of a season different from whatever you’re in now; but even identifying these rhythms can encourage the exhausted or motivate the distracted.

Develop a Personal Ritual; Don’t Feel Ashamed of PTSD

Rituals help order chaos; they are, as someone once described, a kind of “scaffolding” exterior to our own emotions. Rituals also pause activity out of deference to something bigger. In the absence of chaplains, medical workers of any or no faith may find a swift motion, gesture, or pause helpful in marking the passing of a patient. A few seconds holding their hand, silently offering a quick thanks for their life, or even folding their blanket before it is taken to laundry can help acknowledge loss of life before moving on to the next pressing need.

After several successive losses in my own life, I had simple black silicone bands debossed subtly with the words I’m Grieving. On especially hard days, I wore one. The simple visual cue often gave family members quick insight into a mood, and sometimes it opened up meaningful conversations with strangers. I mailed some to others going through season of grief. Decades after the common use of black mourning armbands to signal grieving in public, the simple wristbands were a good modern substitute. In times of grief and loss, tangible items are valuable in marking things that are difficult to verbalize and express.

Tangible touchstones are also helpful for anyone with PTSD. Doctors, clergy, military medics, chaplains, nurses – people in all these professions sometimes come away with post-traumatic stress. Panic attacks, flashbacks, insomnia, obsessive habits – none of these experiences are shameful; none of them indicate a lack of faith or a lack of expertise or a lack of professionalism. Certainly, none of these experiences or others indicate a lack of strength. They simply mean we are all finite, neurological creatures.

It seems likely that we have quite a ways to go in order to flatten curves, wait for vaccine production, understand the long-term health impact of this virus, and discover whether or not yearly vaccines, as with influenza, are necessary. Would you describe your days as being in a time of consolation or a time of desolation? Are you finding a need for ritual – for scaffolding outside of yourself? Take it gently. Remember – for now is not forever. And recall the words on how, “even in the darkest places, joy and goodness can be found” from International Justice Mission founder Gary Haugen: “Joy is the oxygen…”

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES for PASTORS & MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS:

Physicians Start Hotline for Doctors Struggling with Mental Health

Physician Support Line: For Doctors Navigating Covid-19

A Caregiver’s Guide to the Dying Process: The Hospice Foundation of America

When Death Enters Your Life: A Grief Pamphlet for People in Prisons or Jails

Spanish Language Resources: from the Hospice Foundation of America

For American Healthcare Workers Coping with Pandemic Stress: from the CDC

For Emergency Responders Coping with Pandemic Stress: from the CDC

 

 

Looking Ahead – WME Upcoming Events – June 2020

WME is involved in a variety of ministries and covets your prayers for these upcoming events:

Thursday Evening Prayer ~ Facebook Live – 8pm (Eastern time)

Join us for evening prayer each Thursday on Facebook Live. Led by Kim Reisman, this brief time of guided prayer brings together WME’s global Prayer and Fasting Community as well as many others to pray for our world.

June 4, 2020
June 11, 2020
June 18, 2020
June 25, 2020

Real Faith – Real World ~ A podcast connecting the faith within us to the world around us.

Tune in every other Monday for engaging interviews, discussions, and teaching on a wide variety of issues. RFRW is available on most podcast platforms as well as on the WME website

June 8, 2020 ~ Faith and Science in a Global Pandemic with David Wilkinson

June 22, 2020 ~Ministry to Immigrant Communities with Zach Szmara


June 9, 2020 ~Fanning the FLAME
– facilitated video conversation

Fanning the FLAME facilitated video conversations are offered monthly to members of the Order of the FLAME. These conversations are offered to encourage your spirit and support you in ministry. Second Tuesday of every month at 3pm Eastern time. Links will be sent to FLAME members via email. In June we’ll be talking about Preaching in the current climate–from protest to pandemic.

 

Reckoning Before Revival by Elizabeth Glass-Turner

There is a reckoning unfolding that we would avoid if we could – unless we are one of the people who have been crying out for it, praying for it, watching the horizon for it.

But the people who pray for revival and the people who pray for reckoning aren’t always the same.

In the open air of summer camp meeting, I watched with child’s eyes as adults around me responded to altar calls from evangelists. Most of the people sitting on rough wooden pews were not atheists; they were looking for sanctification. Often, they were looking for release – catharsis, tears, freedom in individual hearts and minds. Preachers cautioned against returning home without living out the work claimed to have been done in the heart kneeling at the altar rail. I lost count of the times I went to the altar to pray.

Good was done in those camp meetings. When revivalistic Protestants speak of revival, it almost always entails looking back and looking forward – back to something that was, forward hoping to see it again. A lot has been written in the past few years that helps to puncture the yearning for a supposed golden time or the vague chase for nebulous revival.

Exploration of travailing prayer looks at the presence of focused, laboring intercession preceding spiritual awakening within the footprints of church history. Travailing is childbirth language; it is the language of being in labor, experiencing the pain of contractions. Rather than lament the absence of an idealized past with varying descriptions of revival – rather than hope wistfully to experience those descriptions of revival if God chooses to allow it (as if God is preoccupied on the phone rather than willingly pouring out the power and presence of the Holy Spirit) – discussions of travailing prayer highlight the rhythms of awakenings around the world the past few hundred years. Through this, we find helpful posture and practices for those hungry for spiritual awakening. A willingness to engage in travailing prayer should precede scanning the horizon for signs of revival.

Discussions on travailing prayer seem to be a necessary and pivotal counterpoint to any approach to revival that reduces awakening primarily to a personal experience of subjective emotional response. If we do not accept the burden of laboring in travailing prayer, we cannot complain of the need for awakened revival.

But I would say today, on a cool spring morning in the early years of the 21st century, living and breathing on American soil, that the people who pray for revival and the people who pray for reckoning aren’t always the same people. But they may be praying for the same thing.

People who pray for revival may want Holy Spirit power; people who pray for reckoning want the power of God to flip the power of oppressors upside-down.

People who pray for reckoning are people who are already used to praying travailing prayer, because they don’t have to go far to find themselves groaning in spirit.

The power of God may be poised, waiting to see whether the people accustomed to praying for revival will awaken to the deep-seated memory that revival and reckoning were never separated in the first place.

Reckoning came before the glory of the Lord would be revealed. The apocalypse – the uncovering – the unveiling – the revealing of God’s glorywould not occur without reckoning.

The people of Israel learned and forgot this time and again.

When the Word Became Flesh and walked around revealing God’s glory to untouchables and undesirables and overlookeds and underfeds, reckoning thundered in his wake; the same God spoke the Truth of God and to some it sounded like blessing and beatitude and to others it echoed of woe and dread.

To desire God’s glory without submitting to God’s reckoning is to desire the benefits of God without the costs of the way of Jesus.

Judas wanted to be near power and glory. Judas was near power and glory. Judas could not submit to the reckoning that occurs in the presence of God who was walking around eating fish and raising the dead and sitting in the houses of imperial collaborators.

Judas acted out of self-preservation and then regretted it; but the apocalypse – the uncovering – the unveiling of his own heart and motives became a further moment of reckoning for the rest of the disciples. In the face of the crucifixion, they also faced the revelation of Judas’ actions. Gospel readers know that before Judas tried to bolt as a disciple, he embezzled from the treasury box – a box funded by wealthy women supporting Jesus’ ministry.

In Acts 1, about 120 men and women – disciples of Jesus – gathered together earnestly praying, before Pentecost – before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the midst of this travailing prayer, before Pentecost, they face what Judas has done – “he was one of our number and shared in our ministry.”

Reckoning comes before revival.

Had the wealthy women disciples noticed discrepancies in the treasury and prayed for God to reveal the truth of what was happening?

Had Judas stolen from someone who’d given their last two mites, their five loaves and two fish? Had someone powerless seen his quick, hidden dip into the group funds? Had someone prayed for reckoning? Someone who was dismayed but not shocked to learn about Judas betraying Jesus?

We cannot pray for revival without being willing to face the reckoning. If we submit to the reckoning, we may or may not see revival, but we will have submitted ourselves to the justice, mercy, and power of God – “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

An impoverished unmarried woman prophesied in a time when her homeland was occupied by foreign forces:

“And Mary said:

‘My soul glorifies the Lord
     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
 for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
     for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
    holy is his name.
 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
    from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
    remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
    just as he promised our ancestors.'”

This ferocity from the mother of Christ celebrates the fact that for many, reckoning means hope.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
” She rejoices because God has been “mindful of the humble state of his servant.”

Her suffering had not been overlooked; her humiliation had not been forgotten or ignored; the injustice experienced by her people was being answered in the arrival of the revelation of the Son of God – the God of jubilee and freedom, hope for widows and welcome for strangers.

People who pray for reckoning are people who are already used to praying travailing prayer, because they don’t have to go far to find themselves groaning in spirit.

There is a reckoning unfolding that we would avoid if we could – unless we are one of the people who have been crying out for it, praying for it, watching the horizon for it.

But the people who pray for revival and the people who pray for reckoning aren’t always the same.

Where in the Book of Acts can I find the Holy Spirit pouring out on groups of believers easily characterized by shared race – when that race is so predominantly represented because congregations and traditions sprang up geographically in places that less than a lifetime ago had Sundown signs posted at city limits? How can I say I long for individual and corporate spiritual awakening if I pray for revival in a room dominated by other white Americans?

Predominantly white towns and regions did not happen accidentally. Thousands of American churches are predominantly white because decades ago explicit signs or implicit laws made them that way and kept them that way.

Some of the oldest, storied, traditional Black Methodist denominations exist because white Methodists kept them out. Consider the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Zion Church:

“The origins of this church can be traced to the John Street Methodist Church of New York City. Following acts of overt discrimination in New York (such as black parishioners being forced to leave worship), many black Christians left to form their own churches. The first church founded by the AME Zion Church was built in 1800 and was named Zion; one of the founders was William Hamilton, a prominent orator and abolitionist. These early black churches still belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church denomination, although the congregations were independent. During the Great Awakening, the Methodists and Baptists had welcomed free blacks and slaves to their congregations and as preachers.”

Revival and reckoning had gone hand in hand – during the Great Awakening, Methodists and Baptists had welcomed “free Blacks and slaves to their congregations and as preachers.” But in the wake of the awakening, hearts closed; decades before the Civil War, the debate within the Methodist Episcopal Church over accepting Black ministers led to the official formation of the AME Zion Church.

Sitting in the humidity watching adults fumble down the aisle of the open air tabernacle toward the altar, crickets and cicadas loud against the singing of “I Surrender All,” almost every face around me was white.

How can God take seriously the prayers – even the travailing prayers – for revival and spiritual awakening that are prayed distracted from the cries, laments, and groans of those praying for reckoning?

We want revival only inasmuch as we desire to submit ourselves to reckoning, and the predominantly white Protestant Church in the United States on this Eve of Pentecost 2020 has shown nothing so clearly in the past six months as its damnable refusal to submit to anything, much less the convicting reckoning of Almighty God.

We want revival for ourselves and reckoning for our adversaries, rather than reckoning for ourselves and revival for our adversaries. The way of the cross of Jesus Christ welcomes the painful scrutiny of the Holy Spirit upon ourselves and the Holy Spirit’s merciful grace toward literally everyone else.

White Christians who pray for Holy Spirit power need to ask ourselves if we have a history of using power well. If we cannot answer that with a “yes” then we should beg God to spare us from pouring out any holy power on us that would consume us in its blaze. We should beg God to spare us until we have the character to withstand the presence of the Holy Spirit – “our God is a consuming fire.”

Desiring proximity to power and glory without submitting to the reckoning that occurs in the presence of God will place us squarely alongside a disciple – but not the disciple we would wish to emulate.

If revival does not come for you, it cannot come for me. If reckoning is what you are praying for, I cannot ignore it. If my prayers for revival sound trite while you groan for God to hear your pleas for justice, then I must join your groans and prayers for reckoning, sharing in your travailing as I can.

Ferocious Mary, mother of God prayed table-flipping prayers years before her son walked into the temple for a day of reckoning.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

If Christians are baffled at why our prayers are being sent away empty, maybe we should consider that it is because we are avoiding the reckoning while praying for the revival. The arm of God will crash down on us like thunder if we think we deserve the outpouring of the Holy Spirit while avoiding truth; if we think we are entitled to revival while others need to prove their worthiness.

The Holy Spirit of God poured out on women and men, empowering them to speak in different languages. Jews from all different regions heard God calling out to them in their own languages, with their own wordsGod’s heart in the sound of their own accent:

“‘Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

Pentecost has always only meant that the pouring out of the Holy Spirit means hearing God’s wonders. The Holy Spirit was set loose witnessing to the Resurrected Christ: “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.

If I do not have ears to hear the groaning for reckoning, I do not have ears to hear the wonders of God.

If we justify church leaders who abuse their positions to exploit others, we do not have ears to hear the wonders of God.

If we ignore the groans of suffering people inside or outside the church, we have stopped up our ears to ignore the wonders of God.

If we resist the opportunity to learn our own history and the history of others so that we can better grieve and lament our broken, shared story, then we dim the volume of the wonders of God.

If we scorn the accounts of the hurting out of the compulsion to justify people who remind us of us, we silence the mouth of Jesus; we drown out the wonders of God.

A few months ago, Rev. Shalom Liddick preached on intercession. Anointed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, she testified to this truth:

“I’m your keeper – you are mine. The fact that God came to Cain and asked, ‘where is your brother?’ tells me something. It tells me God will ask me about my community. ‘Hey – where is…?’ It is my responsibility to pray for you. Where are you, friend? We live in a culture where we want to be independent. But I need to make it a point to always present you before God, and you need to make it a point to present me before God.

Remember: you are your brother’s keeper; you are your sister’s keeper. You’re a watchman. And where God has placed you, God has placed you on purpose. Watchmen stand in the middle to communicate, to see, to defend. An intercessor stands in the middle to intervene on behalf of somebody else.

God calls me and calls you to be people who get in the middle and say, ‘God, can you help my sister? Can you help my brother? Can you help my community?’ God is present – in the middle – of everything.”

Reckoning comes before revival, and before we open our eyes on Pentecost Sunday, we must face the question of whether or not we have failed to be each others’ keepers. Whether we have neglected to stand in the middle and intervene.

In John Donne’s classic poem, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” he considers the question not only of inquiring whose funeral a bell announces, but also the dilemma of whose responsibility it is to ring a bell announcing a sermon. Reflecting on funeral bells tolling, he wonders if the bell could ring for himself, if he were too ill to realize how ill he was:

“PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he
knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so
much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my
state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.

The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she
does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action
concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which
is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.
And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is
of one author, and is one volume.”

Can one be so sick they do not recognize the extent of their illness – to such a degree that they do not realize the funeral bell tolls for them? Can our souls carry unseen disease, visible to those around us but hidden from ourselves, so that we do not even realize the reckoning is ours?

On responsibility to ring the sermon bell, he muses that those who realize the dignity of the task will quickly respond to share the responsibility: “The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth.” The bell tolls for the person who thinks it summons them.

But whether or not we have trained our ears to hear the summons is another matter. And this is the tragedy of Pentecost: “Some, however, made fun of them and said, ‘They have had too much wine.'” We cannot hear what we do not listen for. We cannot hear revival if we believe it doesn’t sound like reckoning.

Every time a funeral bell tolls for someone else, it tolls for me, because their death diminishes me.

“I’m your keeper. You are mine. God came to Cain and asked, “where is your brother?”

The people who pray for revival and the people who pray for reckoning aren’t always the same people. But they may be praying for the same thing.

Come, Holy Spirit.

And let justice, like revival, roll down.

 

A Prayer for Burning Grace: Protocols & Pentecost by Elizabeth Glass Turner

Pastors and denominational leaders face tough decisions right now. The Christian faith is inherently embodied; we gather, we meet, we celebrate the Incarnation – the Word Made Flesh. For millenia, we’ve celebrated the Eucharist, finding Christ’s presence in the tangible – wine and bread, a burning grace.

The Christian faith is also inherently self-sacrificial; we mend, we serve, we search out the vulnerable, we protect, we value. We “look out not only for (our) own interests, but also for the interests of others,” being told, “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…” who “took the form of a servant.” (Phil. 2) Early Christians rescued abandoned babies on hillsides and cared for their own plague-stricken members as well as caring for poor members of the Empire (to the Empire’s chagrin).

In gathered worship or scattered and serving, Christians have been told that whatever we do, we should do with good cheer. Rejoice in worship, rejoice in giving. Rejoice in getting together, rejoice in serving others. Grumbling is apparently not a Fruit of the Spirit. We value creation; and we show it by serving.

Originally seen as shared by Dr. Holly Taylor Coolman.

The Body of Christ is essential even if meeting together is interrupted. Churches are essential insofar as the Body of Christ is essential; but access to church buildings is not an absolute, essential piece of the puzzle. While the Body of Christ, existing in the life of congregations, is essential, congregants are not expendable. We are a people who value life and promote its flourishing.

The Christian faith is inherently embodied; but it is also inherently self-sacrificial. And so many face tough decisions. Leaders of all denominations have an opportunity to take strain off of individual clergymembers by continuing to create contingency plans and best practice protocol:

plans, practices, and protocol that cheerfully look out for the value and dignity of each church member and potential visitor.

When the strain is greatest, let’s continue to forge ahead with creative resilience.

By doing so we march hand in hand with the midwives of Egypt, who protected vulnerable newborns at risk to their own lives, thwarting the easy call of casual contempt, by the burning grace of God.

By doing so we march hand in hand with Moses and Miriam, called to distance from the land of their upbringing, caught between warriors and water, carried to the other side on dry land by the burning grace of God.

By doing so we march hand in hand with Elijah, who poured water on his altar, making sure every single witness knew that it was only God who could make the fire fall, watching the revelation of God crack the sky, vindicated by the burning grace of God.

By doing so we march hand in hand with Esther, who found herself vulnerable in halls of influence and power, carried by the urgent encouragement of one who saw clearly the stakes for a whole people group. She found favor with the powerful, toppling corrupt schemes and protecting the innocent by the burning grace of God.

By doing so we march hand in hand with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who found themselves caught in the crucible but discovered in it the presence of a fourth – “I see a fourth man, who looks like the Son of God” – rescued from the inferno by the burning grace of God, not even smelling like ash.

By doing so we march hand in hand with Paul, who cried out in his letter to his fellow church members in Philippi how much he longed to see them face to face, person to person; how intently he prayed for them, by the burning grace of God.

By doing so we march hand in hand with John Wesley, who as a child was rescued by community members during a roaring house fire, grabbed from a window, a “brand plucked from the flames.” His early memories were seared by other people sacrificing in order to protect him; later he experienced his very soul being warmed, not by trauma but by the burning grace of God.

We have nothing to fear from closed doors; we have everything to fear from closed hearts.

Our hope is not in “business as usual,” our hope is in the fourth man, who looks like the Son of God, wandering around casually in the crucible with us – the Ascended Christ.

Our hope is not in the Pentecost banners we’re accustomed to seeing in church sanctuaries, our hope is in the Holy Spirit, who descended on believers – only to scatter them.

In this moment we still have a choice of what we are going to be: a dead, rotted stump of former things, or potent seed bursting with latent life, willing to live scattered by the Spirit.

By the burning grace of God, we pray, Christ Ascended, that you will char away our bent to dry rot; scatter us like fresh, powerful seed, holding the promise of fruit we can only imagine, because it is only possible through the radiance of your Holy Spirit.

We do not like feeling scattered, God; we would rather stay close to each other.

Remind us that You are enough.

Remind us that you bind the stretches of the universe together and you bind us together, too.

Remind us that your Holy Spirit is faithful to keep us sensitive to each others’ needs if we will listen to Your Spirit who binds us together.

You are not just God who sustains gravity; you are God who knits with quantum entanglement for fun. Entangle our spirits with Your Holy Spirit, like particles that, “cannot be described independently from the state of the others even when separated by large distances;” entangle our hearts with each other.

Christ Ascended, in you we find wholeness; Holy Spirit, entangle those of us who feel distanced, lonely, despairing, afraid.

By the burning grace of God, keep us from being overwhelmed by distancing; sustain us with Pentecost entanglement that scatters and connects at the same time.

Through Christ our Lord, the only open door we need – Amen.

 

Looking Ahead – WME Upcoming Events – May 2020

WME is involved in a variety of ministries and covets your prayers for these upcoming events:

Thursday Evening Prayer ~ Facebook Live – 8pm (Eastern time)

Join us for evening prayer each Thursday on Facebook Live. Led by Kim Reisman, this brief time of guided prayer brings together WME’s global Prayer and Fasting Community as well as many others to pray for our world.

May 7, 2020
May 14, 2020
May 21, 2020
May 28, 2020

Real Faith – Real World ~ A podcast connecting the faith within us to the world around us.

Tune in every other Monday for engaging interviews, discussions, and teaching on a wide variety of issues. RFRW is available on most podcast platforms as well as on the WME website

May 11, 2020 ~ What is evangelism? Kim Reisman and Rob Haynes

May 25, 2020 ~ The Body of Hope. Rob Haynes and Beth Felker Jones


May 12, 2020 ~Fanning the FLAME
– facilitated video conversation

Fanning the FLAME facilitated video conversations are offered monthly to members of the Order of the FLAME. These conversations are offered to encourage your spirit and support you in ministry. Second Tuesday of every month at 2pm central time. Links will be sent to FLAME members via email. In May we’ll be talking about church planting.