The Mosher Pit

I hadn’t seen that this had been released, which I find a bit disconcerting because I expected to get an email at least when it was. But since I’ve found it, let me point you to Andrea Useem’s excellent “The Networked Congregation: Embracing the Spirit of Experimentation, “ a guide from CongregationalResources.org on Web 2.0 in the faith world. I was one of her sources, having attended a focus group at the Alban Institute shortly after starting helenmosher.com–and I know it was soon after because the invitation was one of the first emails I ever got at the helenmosher gmail address.

It’s interesting because I’ve been asked to start coordinating the acolyte schedule and training-type things at church, so revisiting some of the comments I made over a year ago when I was much more active in the church-2.0 conversation was kind of funny. One of the things I said (from here):

Mosher pointed out that if a congregation doesn’t set up a Facebook group, someone else will probably do it on his or her own. While someone taking such an initiative is great, it’s a potential negative if the effort is unsupported by the congregational leadership and may duplicate or even muddle other communication efforts.

The positive approach is to actively engage congregational members who are proficient at new technologies. This can be a new form of ministry. “If a college kid in your parish can set up a Facebook group, then that’s their version of hosting coffee hour,” said Mosher. “It’s good for church staff members to engage people like that and recognize their knowledge as a ministry and say, ‘We can collaborate on this.’”

And just as a shout-out to Christ and Grace, the church of my youth, this quote here reminds me that much of church, especially for young people, is community:

Helen Thompson Mosher faced a challenge in her teenage years that involved not time but geographic constraints. “When I was fifteen years old, my parents changed churches, and I lost all my friends,” she recalled. “Shortly thereafter, I stopped going to church—for about fifteen years.” Mosher imagined what could have happened had the online tools that exist today been available to her then. “I might have been able to continue to interact with those friends and stay connected to my church community, and I might not have vanished off on this fifteen-year detour.” Mosher has since reconnected with her childhood church, reading its newsletter online. “I’ve realized this is the church of my heart in many, many ways.”

Wow, I’m so vain, I think this post is about me. Ha! Read the whole thing (this link will take you to a PDF version if you find the navigation confusing), because there are a lot of good quotes from a lot of neat people–including my Episcopal Cafe colleague the Rev. Ann Fontaine and my former RevGalBlogPal colleague the Rev. Jan Edmiston.

Posted in Faith, Networking, New Media, Religion, Social Media by: Helen
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This has happened to me at every church I’ve attended semi-regularly as an adult: When I go to an event, the people at the event, when introduced to me, ask, “Oh, do you go to the 8 o’clock service?” At churches where there are more than two services, I get “So which service do you go to?” There is, I guess, an underlying assumption that in order to be a part of of church community, one must attend ONE of the services a church offers, and since they don’t see me there, I must go to the other one.

It has happened so regularly that I’m beginning to think there’s something to this, in spite of the fact that I have yet to actually meet a new person (i.e. be introduced to a strike up a conversation with someone, not just shake their hand at the Peace) within a church service.

Now, for the baggage part of that: I don’t go to the 8 a.m. service, and I sometimes feel like there’s something judgmental inherent in the assumption that if I don’t go to one, I go to the other. There’s a big part of me that feels like I got so much church service between the ages of roughly 3 and 15 that now, when I go, it’s a recitation. That’s not to say there’s not comfort in it: there is, it’s like meditation, it’s like practice, a regrounding of oneself in the pray, listen, reflect, repent, commune cycle of the Anglican liturgy.

But I really don’t go every week, at least not to one, single church. Sometimes I’m traveling and visit other churches. Sometimes I go to church in Second Life. Sometimes I flip open my prayer book right here in my office and discover something new in it. Sometimes I’m out hiking and it’s just enough to know that presence within the cricket and bird song, the rustling leaves, and the laughter of a partner who loves you pushing you along.

Truth is, I have trouble imposing structure on my life — structure tends to impose itself on me, and the results can be painful. But on the other hand, I find that I’m always in a place of discovery and delight. I think it’s part of my ENFP wiring, that I like the unpredictability of “church where you are,” and thrive on it.

So what service do I attend? The one in my heart. I’m still trying to figure out how that works in community, but I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with why I have so many Episcopal priests among my Facebook friends.

Posted in Episcopal Church, Faith, Reflections by: Helen
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Periodically I run across the most amusing descriptions of Episcopalians while combing the ‘net for links on the Cafe. Today, this gem from horror ‘zine Fangoria. Kevin Sorbo apparently plays an Episcopal priest in a new horror flick called “Something Beneath.” And it’s a good thing the hunky former Hercules star is an Episcopal priest, they write, because… well:

In SOMETHING BENEATH (making its DVDebut September 9 from Genius Products, following airings on the Sci Fi Channel), Sorbo swaps Dylan Hunt’s space outfits for a collar in the role of Father Douglas Middleton, an ecologically aware Episcopalian priest (note to budding screenwriters: Episcopalian priests are handy because they’re allowed to have love interests). Attending an eco conference in a brand new hotel, Father Middleton finds himself caught up in a series of bizarre and horrific deaths. The building, it seems, has disturbed a sentient ooze which creates terrifying, fatal hallucinations in the minds of its staff and guests.

Posted in Episcopal Church, Faith, LOLZ! by: Helen
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Ruth Gledhill, reporting on yesterday’s developments at Lambeth, links the Anglican Faith and Order Commission to–well–fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to, um, the Archbishop (at least, I think that’s what she’s saying), and nice purple uniforms.

Bishops are urging the setting up of an Anglican Faith and Order Commission to give “guidance” on controversial issues such as same-sex blessings and gay ordinations.

The commission was put forward as a proposal this week to the 650 bishops attending the Lambeth Conference as a way of preserving the future unity of the Anglican Communion. Insiders compared it with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body formerly headed by the present Pope as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and previously known as the Holy Office or Inquisition.

…

The proposals are a sign of how the Anglican Communion is centralising its authority in an attempt to prevent further schismatic events such as the consecration of a gay bishop.

Although he will resist describing himself as such, the effect of all these measures, if they are successfully implemented, will be to turn the Archbishop of Canterbury into a de facto Anglican Pope.

Seems like the press is all out of whack over this, but as my colleagues at the Episcopal Cafe point out, this is a HUGE leap, so say the least, so, uhhh — really. Don’t expect the English Inquisition.

Less snarky post on the Lead later.

Posted in Anglicanism, Faith by: Helen
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Now that I have a Flip camera, one of the ways I’m most empowered to share things I discover with you is through video. Now, I’ve always been a journalist of the writerly kind, so this kind of media is a bit new to me, but I think I’ve got a strong first entry for you: a bluegrass band called Bear Down Easy. According to their MySpace page:

Bear Down Easy was forged in October of 2006 by five ambitious musicians eager to explore the realms of acoustic music. Our original members included Cole Sigmon on bass, Lucas Nelson on lead guitar and banjo, Andy Burke on mandolin, Paul Stroebel on fiddle, and Ian Mulrenin on guitar. When our talented bassist skipped town to work on a fishing boat, his position was quickly filled by Jonah Freedman. As such, our original vision remains, combining original tunes with traditional bluegrass, folk, gospel, and blues. Bear Down Easy lives and performs in Asheville, NC and looks forward to taking its act on the road in the future.

So not only am I a come-lately fan of bluegrass (in the past 2-3 years), I’m well-connected in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, and our bishop has a real love of bluegrass, and while I missed his bluegrass festival this year, I’m going to be sure to tag this in such a way that hopefully he’ll check this out, and lots of other folks will as well. Because even though my specialty is 80s alternative music, I loves me some bluegrass when I’m in country girl mode. This song is called “I Never Got My Dear John” (with an “allrighty” from your truly). We’re standing in front of an office building on Haywood Ave. in Asheville, where the band had set up to play an evening set, and Chris and I wandered up and… welllll…….quite the crowd gathered round by the end.

So, without further ado, a new feature here at helenmosher.com: music from the streets, with Bear Down Easy:

Posted in Bluegrass, Diocese of Virginia, Music, Music from the Streets, North Carolina, Out and About by: Helen
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Last night at the Episcopal Cafe, we posted links to all the blogs we’re aware of written by Anglican bishops. In a fit of “how am I going to keep up with this,” I created a pipeline of the posts and gave it a single feed, which you can subscribe to here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/lambethbishops

Hope it’s useful to some of you as well, especially with the Lambeth conference being next week.

Posted in Episcopal Church, Faith by: Helen
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Wittenburg Door obliges us with a post-St. Patrick interview with Peter Rollins, complete with Python quips-backs at intellectually demanding discourses. But as it turns out, the Belfast philosopher  is the founder of the Ikon collective, which heavily blurs the region between skeptic and seeker, according to the article’s preamble

Once we shift into Ikon’s typical stomping ground, however, Rollins expounds on the nature of God as not being something or someone we can understand  so much as something or someone we can experience, and as such:

DOOR: Moving on to that whole putting-theory-into-practice thingie, how do Ikon’s services put into practice your belief that the truth in Christianity is not described but experiential?

ROLLINS: In a sense I would not even want to say that the truth of Christianity is experiential in so much as the truth of Christianity is life and life is not experienced. Rather life is what allows us to experience. Just as one does not see sight but it is sight that enables one to see. In other words I don’t think we experience the truth of Christianity but the truth of Christianity is hinted at in the renewed way we experience everything else. In this way the truth of faith is not one thing among other things but rather is that which brings us into new relationship with all things. The way we explore this within Ikon is by attempting to create a gathering in which Christianity is not fundamentally about an understanding or experience but rather a way of being and interacting in the world.

DOOR: Why do you have your services in a bar?

ROLLINS: Whenever Ikon started meeting in bar, it was the least important place. I liked this bar and I asked the bartender if I could do it. As time went on, I almost reversed completely. You hear talk about different types of space, intimate space between a couple, personal space, social space, and public space. Church often feels like intimate space between you and God. So we’re exploring doing this in social space where secular and social begin to get blurred. We’re tying to inhabit that social space and live out our fractured lives in public. I don’t know many groups who are experimenting with this.

DOOR: Most of the US religious leaders who act out in public tend to get arrested.

DOOR: When we’re having services in a bar, you get people smoking blow, heckling, things like that. It’s really scary. But it also created this wonderful dynamic. Some people who could never go near a church find they can go into this bar and explore their faith. After a year or two of going to Ikon, they could go to a church again. Our most committed regulars are workers at the bar. If we ever have elders at Ikon they’ll be bar staff. Our bartender is in prison at the moment, but he could put the fear of God in anybody that heckled us. At first he never engaged with us, he was suspicious of who we were. One day we brought some Catholic workers in and at that moment his attitude changed. There was a moment when we had a member of Ikon go to light a cigarette. He stopped and offered to light her cigarette. That was a real breakthrough moment when he crossed over and he joined us.

Elders = bar staff. I love it.

More here.

Posted in Church of Beer, Religion by: Helen
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Christ Announces Hiring Of Associate Christ | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

“Overwhelmed by prayers,”  Jesus Christ is urging folks to enlist the services of a customer service rep from Tacoma, Washington, who has promised the same level of service as people have come to expect from the Son of God himself, according to the Onion.

Posted in Humor, LOLZ!, Link of the Day, Religion by: Helen
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Ran across this in a blog that’s an outreach of the Diocese of Central NY that seems to be a proponent of the church of beer. (They have an open spirituality discussion that meets monthly at Empire Brewing Company, in Armory Square in Syracuse.) This essay talks about the implications of marriage in the afterlife, but I had one of those eye-pop out of your head moments when I read the latter portion of it:

Ironically, the emphasis today on marriage and family values has contributed to the loss of community. Isolated and without adequate social support, families are forced to rely on their own resources. The day to day stress on families has increased significantly as both parents are pressured to work more hours than their parents. Children hardly get to be children these days, passed as they are from one activity to the next, one parent to the next. The pressures and tensions are just too much for individual households to bear and literally pits family members against each other.

So beware of political candidates who claim to support family values, it actually demonstrates a lack of vision, an inability to imagine a better basis for our society.

Marriage cannot serve as the foundation of any society. Like Atlas trying to shoulder the weight of the world, marriage is crumbling under a burden it cannot possibly bear. Attempts to artificially reinforce it as the basis of society only make it a rigid and oppressive structure. And worse, insisting on this false foundation deprives us of the firmer ground we so desperately need.

Does this mean we shouldn’t get married? No, but marriage needs to be grounded in the larger context of a human community founded on compassion rather than oppression. If we remember to view marriage as a fragile relationship rather than an institution, we are much more likely to honor the humanity of the people involved.

The emphasis is mine, because it hits very close to home on a couple of points. Many gen-x-ers don’t trust institutions, and that includes both marriage and the church. Maybe that’s why the church of beer, as I call it, is what it is. Hanging out with friends over tea/coffee or a couple of pints and allowing conversation to flow freely may seem anarchic or subversive as a way of practicing faith in community to some folks. But for others, it’s freeing. Similarly, as DFH and I wrestle with what it means to be married, his distrust of the institution is clear even though I plead for us to approach it as a way of personally affirming our lifelong commitment to one another.

Anyhow, No Outcasts is a nifty blog, with a liberal dose of illustrations for those of us that think words are just the things that come between the pictures. You can check out the essay — and find the rest of the blog, which seems to be updated monthly — here.

Posted in Church of Beer, Family, Link of the Day, Religion by: Helen
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Clergy and lay delegates at the annual council, faced with a slashed budget for Shrine Mont camp scholarship budgets, were strident in their call to have the funding restored.

But of course, when you restore something in one line, you must cut it somewhere else, right?

So it was put to the council: how many of you would be willing to give $100 now, to restore this funding?

Hands around the room shot up. Tellers went around to do a count, and instead got checks and cash donations, on the spot. The estimated return to the program was $19,000.

Bishop Lee, noting this unusual development, said, “Can you imagine Congress doing this?”

Discussion that followed underscored the importance of taking this back to your congregations.

GIVE!

Posted in Diocese of Virginia by: Helen
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