Week of the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost 2020
“Formation for Our Witness to the World – Especially Now”

Dear Friends in Christ:

As you receive this message, we await the outcome of the elections. Whatever the results will be, the days, weeks, and months that lie before us will undoubtedly present us with challenges on many different fronts. We will need to be well-equipped for offering to the world confident, hopeful Christian witness. Thus, our particular season in our life together as church and nation calls for intensified efforts concerning adult Christian education and formation. Being formed in the faith for the work that God has entrusted to us for the sake of the world is not just for children and youth, especially now. Thus, I am committed as your Pastor to shepherding occasions and resources for adult Christian education in our congregation. I envision Resurrection as a community in which people of all ages and in varieties of family circumstances routinely engage together in various opportunities for Christian education that not only inform the mind, but form the heart and character for our ministry in daily life. The world needs our mature, faithful Christian witness that has been well-formed by lifelong Christian education.

These weekly messages from me are one way that I seek to live into a vision for expanded ministries of education and formation. I intentionally address a wide array of topics that reflect the comprehensive nature of our ministry and mission. I am most heartened when you engage me in conversation with your responses to these messages – via email, in person, on the phone. Let’s be in dialogue. Disagree with me when you feel moved, and don’t be afraid to let me know. I delight in such engagement, as it affords me the opportunity to elaborate on topics, going beyond where I can go in just a couple of pages of essay. I also welcome your suggestions of topics for future messages.

Another expansion of opportunities for adult education and formation are Bible Studies that incorporate lectio divina as a format for engaging the scriptures in studied and devotional ways that attend to both head and heart. In addition to a group that meets with me via Zoom on Thursday mornings at 11:00 every other week, a second and newer group meets on Monday evenings at 6:30 to explore Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. To date, about 15 people – a very heartening number – have committed to joining in this conversation. And I am pleasantly surprised that lectio divina as a format for engaging scripture works rather well via Zoom. It’s not too late to join in these opportunities – see specifics in the weekly announcement message.

Also heartening is the commitment to exploring racism in our church and nation and how we can be better formed to seek an end to this injustice. About 15 Resurrection members have committed to participating in monthly discussions of Pastor Lenny Duncan’s book, Dear Church: A Love Letter From a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. Because of the provocative nature of Pastor Duncan’s prophetic witness, we incorporate prayerful, spiritual practices into these discussions to keep us tethered to the peace of God which rests within us and among us as we move forward in conversation. In addition to these monthly book discussions, there are also the monthly Friday evening film screenings on works which also seek to widen our horizons about racism. These film screenings are intentionally intergenerational. Again, see the coming announcement messages for further information.

Furthermore, we have a number of members who are very capable teachers. While I may shepherd our adult education and formation initiatives as Pastor, I am certainly not the only one who will teach. As one shining example, consider our member, Gail Ramshaw, who has written voluminously in the service of the church and its witness over many decades. Since we just celebrated All Saints Day, and I have recently commended to you our Lutheran calendar of commemorations of the saints, I call to your attention a book that Gail wrote which helps us derive spiritual benefit from the many commemorations on our calendar: More Days for Praise: Festivals and Commemorations in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Augsburg Fortress 2016). This lovely work contains information about each person commemorated along with devotional aids to help us gain a palpable sense that we are indeed surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses as we run the race that is set before us, ever looking to Jesus, to whom the saints point.

In short, we are attending to the life of the mind and heart at Resurrection Church, even when we cannot meet in person, so that we can be formed to proclaim a word of healing and hope to the world. I don’t think I’m misreading things, but I sense a good deal of energy and desire for occasions and resources for adult and intergenerational education and formation. Again, the number of participants is heartening to me, as are the resources and persons available to us. I also look forward to opportunities to expand on these current offerings. I am especially interested in exploring new formats for engaging in communal discernment about topics which generally create a lot of tension in our wider society. My prayer is that Resurrection Church in community will embody the kind of loving, respectful dialogue that is typically absent in other civic arenas currently. May our congregation grow to be a model for such respectful dialogue, especially when we can agree to disagree and still remain in genuine Christian community. For the church, as an embodiment of the dominion of God in Christ, is not a club for the like-minded. Rather, the church is inherently a very diverse community united in Christ for the world’s healing and salvation.

May God in Christ guide us in our holy conversations to form us for the work that God has entrusted to us for the sake of our broken world,

Pastor Jonathan Linman