intersections

The ecology of Christmas trees

If you're like our family, you look forward to putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it together with Christmas music playing in the background while cookies bake in the oven. No, seriously...we actually do this!

We also put up a tree in our church sanctuary every year (in spite of a few protestations to the contrary by those who see Christmas trees, and everything associated with Christmas, as pagan). If you need a statement by Ellen White, here you go....

Anyway, while shopping for a tree for our church this week, a friend of mine at the church and I were discussing the environmental impact of cutting down a live tree vs. artificial vs. something else we hadn't thought of yet. Personally I envision the day that our church members create a "sculpture" of sorts that we use as a modern Christmas tree. But I digress...

So, today I ran across this short article on Evangelicals for Social Action website called, "Christmas Trees should be green, and it's easier than you think." Here's a choice quote:

Artificial trees are almost always made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a plastic that is toxic to produce, heaping pollution on the poor denizens of “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana and other unfortunate places where vinyl factories are concentrated. Moreover, the plastic in the trees is sometimes stabilized with lead. You don’t want to eat or breathe the particles that slough off your plastic tree onto your presents. Everyone, repeat after me: No vinyl, that’s final. Let it become a life motto.

What is the final answer? I'll let you find out by reading the whole article here. It will only take a minute.

Advent rising

Advent is upon us. Last night a group of us from the church got together and decorated the church. It looks great. We don't have our tree up yet, as the trees weren't even being sold yet around our neighborhood. We'll add the tree for next week.

The graphic above was designed by one of our new members, Scott Arany, who is pursuing his MA is Theology, Worship and the Arts at Fuller Seminary. One of the beautiful things that is emerging around the Hollywood Church are artists who have joined the church who are beginning to create original work for use in worship. This ranges from fliers like the one above, to the backgrounds of the PowerPoint slides we use for the scripture for the week, to short video content. It is a joy to behold.

At work...

My wife snapped this shot of me while I was working the other day. Her composition of this shot, she says, is her interpretation of my life at work. You can actually learn quite a lot about me from this one simple snapshot. Click the photo to enlarge.

The Grace of Preaching the Lectionary

Today is Christ the King Sabbath - the last Sabbath of the Christian Year. Next Sabbath begins the new year with the season of Advent.

For approximately 13 months now I have been preaching from the Revised Common Lectionary. There are some amazing online resources that are incredibly helpful in preaching the lectionary. My favorite is a site called Text Week. In addition I have found the New Proclamation series of lectionary commentaries extremely helpful and insightful. But nothing replaces simply dwelling in the text and allowing the text to read your context and speak into the congregation's life.

I have been leading my congregation in the observance of Advent for the past 7 years and Lent for about the last 5 years, but this is the first year I have preaching an entire cycle through the lectionary.

I highly recommend this discipline. It is a rich gift that has been given to the church through the centuries. For myself and my congregation, we have found that God has met us in the text in surprising ways. Without fail the text for a particular week (and this year I have been strictly holding to the Gospel reading for the week) has been precisely what our community has needed. You would have to be here to fully appreciate the grace we have found in this.

The lectionary takes the the preacher out of the driver's seat and places the text of scripture in the central role. Rather than me trying to figure out "what my congregation needs to hear" we simply approach the text with hopeful expectation. I have preached more "difficult passages" this year than ever before in 13 years of ministry.

I frequently explain to my congregation what I am doing, but I'm not sure it has become part of their consciousness just yet. Others observe a change without directly referencing the lectionary. One member approached me with great surprise one day, saying that she heard some other preacher speak from EXACTLY THE SAME TEXT on Sunday that I spoke from on Sabbath. "Imagine that!" I thought to myself.

Next Sabbath begins my favorite season of the church year - Advent. It is also the richest season for Seventh-day Adventists. I will hopefully write more about Advent during the next four weeks. Hope is an Advent virtue, after all.

Anyone else out there preaching the lectionary?
If so, what have you learned?
Is anyone tired of trying to be clever week after week?

Mac OS X Leopard - I've got problems...

Okay, so I just upgraded my Mac PowerBook G4 to Leopard. It's very cool in many ways. My favorite upgrades are in Mail. "Data detectors" are really awesome. Mail automatically detects dates, addresses, phone numbers, etc and with a couple of clicks you can add people to your Address Book and dates to iCal.

However, I have some very annoying problems. Anyone who cares to chime in, I could use some help with these things (and yes, I downloaded the most recent patch, so I'm running 10.5.1).

1. My computer no longer detects my external hard drive.

2. I had to reinstall all my printers and now the print options are different on my copy machine/printer at work.

3. Mail is having a real hard time with SMTP servers. At work I can barely send email. Every email has a problem and after trying several times a few of them will sometimes go through. I don't have the same problem at home. I haven't changed any of the settings.

4. iCal is running REALLY SLOW. When I try to do anything I get the dreaded pinwheel. It sometimes takes 15-20 seconds between every action.

5. On top of everything else, I have less than 1 GB left on my 80 GB hard drive. Any ideas how to reduce the stuff on my hard drive. I've figured out the easy stuff, like moving data files to an external drive, but it makes a minimal impact. There's got to be something else eating up all my space.

6. And while I'm at it, does anyone else notice that Firefox totally consumes the CPU. Does that happen with other browsers?

Bottom line, my machine is completely maxed out. I've got to free up some resources. I'm already running the max memory (2 GB) so there's not a lot more upgrading I can do.

Buy Nothing Day

Today was Buy Nothing day. I guess it's a little too late to be posting about it. However, tomorrow is International Buy Nothing Day, so you can buy nothing tomorrow if you succumbed to commercial pressure today.

As Seventh-day Adventists we have always taught that the Sabbath is a day to, among other things, withdraw from buying and selling - the capitalism hamster wheel - to connect with things that are ultimate. As my friend Nathan Brown once pointed out, Adventists celebrate a weekly Buy Nothing Day.

I hope as you enter this crazy season of commercialism gone wild, that you will step back and evaluate what is truly important.

Gratitude

I am a very fortunate soul. On this Thanksgiving morning I find that gratitude comes quite easily. That fact alone is something to be grateful for. It is not always that gratitude springs up in me. I have waged a life-long battle with self-pity, so I am prone to be negative sometimes, and feel sorry for myself. But I have learned in the past few years that this self-pity arises from an anxiety that lives deep in me; that I should be somewhere I am not, doing something that I am not doing.

"My family should be to this mile-marker by now."
"My church should have become thus-and-such by now."
"I should have accomplished these goals."

More recently I find myself enjoying the journey a lot more than I have in the past. I like where I am right now. There is still a good deal of "holy discontent" that boils in my belly, but I am really happy with my life and who I spend my days with. So, on that note, a few things I am very readily grateful for today:

Zoe & Sophie, my daughters - of course I would say this, but I am so happy with their growth and they way I seem them turn toward God and goodness. I see small evidences that they sense the beauty of the world they inhabit and that makes me happy and thankful.

Elysabeth - I've learned so much from her and I cherish the way she keeps me grounded and focused. She is my solid foundation and my motivation to be a better dad and husband.

My congregation - what can I say, I serve the best church in the world (or at least the USA). They give me such freedom to express what God is doing in my life. Together we are cultivating a relational space that is increasingly life-giving to our community and the people who are becoming our friends. I serve God's kingdom with the most talented and beautiful people in the world.

Friends - I have, in the past few months, formed one or two deeper relationships that have been so important to me. These friends (I'm thinking of one in particular) give me the gift of time - taking me away from the fast-paced life I tend to live and slowing me down to a more human rhythm. What a gift!

Books - people who know me know that I live my life in books. I always have a book with me - at all times. I've been on a good run recently and read some amazing books. I'll write more on those books soon.

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The image above is called, "Gratitude," and described by artist, Dosia McKay as "an abstract bouquet of flowers, a heart overflowing with gratitude and joy."

Interfaith Call to Justice: LA 2007

Last weekend (Nov 11 & 12), I and four other members of the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church, attended and amazing conference called Interfaith Call to Justice, organized by Rabbi Suzanne Singer. It was a combination of remarkable, inspiring plenary session and practical and informative trainings on community organizing and on particular issues.

I was asked by the Executive Director of LA Voice, Jared Rivera, if I would co-teach two sessions on LA Voice's work in community organizing and the PICO model of faith-based community organizing. I spent most of my few minutes talking about how the community organizing work has helped transform my congregation by developing leaders. In preparing for this presentation, I realized more clearly than I have before, just how effective this work has been in forming leaders. Perhaps I'll write more about that at some point in the future. I'm anxious to show you a video that our Media Ministry created that really gets at the heart of the organizing work in our church.

The plenary sessions at Call to Justice were an amazing feast. The evening of the first day, as I and my crew from Hollywood were finding our seats I was talking to some people around me when this gentleman approached us and asked me what my interest was (an interesting way of engaging with me - much more interesting than saying, "what do you do?"). I told him I was a pastor and these were my friends from the church. I asked who he was. His reply - "Chip Murray." I was surprised I hadn't recognized him, but what an honor to get to speak with him for a few minutes before his presentation that night. He even agreed to have a picture taken with me (above).

The final session on the second day, before the conference ended, we heard from Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries. He has spent the last 21 years working among the gangs of East Los Angeles. He regaled us for an hour with story after story of "kinship" being formed in unlikely places - like between a white Catholic priest and a bunch of "homies." We were laughing out loud, then weeping. Soon there will be audio files of the main talks online, so I'll keep you posted.

It was exciting to be in this interfaith environment where I could interact with Jews, Muslims and Christians who are all engaging in working for peace and justice in God's world. To have 4 other people from the church fan out and take in various parts of the conference was also a privilege. It is a sign, to me, that the principles I have been teaching for the past two years have really taken root and are beginning to spread on their won across our congregation. I am so lucky to be able to service this amazing group of people in this place and at this time.

The Fire Place

This is something my church is doing right now. It is an experiment of one of our Missional Action Teams. The second gathering of The Fire Place is tonight. If you're around the area, please join us.

The new big idea

I just learned of this new strategy being promoted by the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.

EVANGELISM INITIATIVE – 2009, “YEAR OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM” (09YPE) — Imagine what could be done if, with the power of the Holy Spirit, we all worked together to fulfill our God-given mission!  Ron Clouzet, NAD Ministerial Association Secretary, presented an outline for the 09YPE to the nearly 340 delegates at the session,  challenging the North American Division to increase its membership by 10%, or about 100,000 new members every year. (There were 38,275 baptisms and professions of faith in 2006.)  “It was impossible to see Nineveh repent. It was also impossible for a handful of Adventists to win the world,” said Clouzet. But I am reminded that what is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:27).  Every pastor and leader is challenged to believe that through God, “not by power, nor by might, but by My Spirit” mountains shall become plain.

It seems like the latest strategy to conquer the world for Jesus. You can read the rest of the details of the strategy here.

When are we going to get it? The underlying institutional anxiety about its own validity and survival is so transparent. In 2009 the Southern California Conference has a "big evangelistic strategy" of it's own, so I don't know how it going to mesh with this Year of Pastoral Evangelism. We're having 4 consecutive evangelistic campaigns with Shawn Boonstra of It Is Written, basically running back to back in four quadrants of Los Angeles.