In year’s past, in addition to voting on the budget, we’ve held a vote regarding the slate of council nominees, and it was a source of some confusion. Rather than being an election per say, it was simply a vote of affirmation. If you had no reason to question the suitability of the nominee for the office they were nominated for, you were to vote in the affirmative.
Now, as you’d expect, the vast majority of ballots come back with all nominees affirmed. Inevitably, however, there are a couple of ballots which didn’t. So we were left with the question: what do we do with them? In other words, was this ballot an indication of someone’s reservations about the nominee? Or was it simply an indication that the voter had misunderstood the process and was just indicating a preference for the other candidate? There was no way we could know.
The Administrative Council has gone back and forth on this matter for the last few years (at least). We decided last year that we would no longer include this vote as part of the process. The only meaningful way in which we can hear and address concerns someone may have with a nominee is a conversation between the person with the reservation and either a pastor or an elder some time before the vote. By no means do we want to shut down opportunities to express concern, we simply want to enable people to do so in a way that honors and addresses those concerns in a meaningful way.
If you have any questions about this decision please contact a member of the Administrative Council–myself (Pastor Mark), Pastor Paula, Mary Vanderkam, Linda Hanstra, Chris Brinks-Rea, or Ruth Engbers. Joel Gabrielse who is on the AC had not come on board at the time of the discussion.
This will be Frontier Ruckus’ third trip to Subkirke. They have developed a fan base here in South Bend, especially at Bethel College. We’re happy to have them back! They are excellent in concert – very fun to watch, and they incorporate a large varieties of instruments, including banjo and musical saw (have you ever seen someone play a saw with a violin bow? It’s a fun thing to watch!). NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series did an interview with the band that you can see here:
CMT describes the band like this:
Frontier Ruckus is a roots-based band from East Lansing, MI that incorporates elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, country, blues, and jazz into their lyric-driven songs. The band was formed by singer/songwriter Matthew Milia and banjo player David Winston Jones while in high school, and became a three-piece with Eli Eisman on bass. Milia then went to Michigan State University and Jones went to the University of Michigan, but instead of disbanding Frontier Ruckus, they expanded the band, adding Ryan “Smalls” Etzcorn on drums, Anna Burch on harmony vocals, and multi-dimensional musician Zachary Nichols on horns, singing saw, and melodica. All three additions were recruited by Milia in East Lansing.
The band recorded a six-song EP in 2006 entitled I Am the Water You Are Pumping, which was self-released. Five of those songs appeared again in 2008 on the band’s first full-length album, The Orion Songbook, which was released on Quite Scientific Records and named for Orion Township, a Metro Detroit suburb. Eisman left the band around the time of the album’s release and was replaced on bass by Burch. The following year, Frontier Ruckus released The Orion Songbook as a double vinyl on Lower Peninsula Records with Way Upstate & the Crippled Summer, Pt. 1, another six-song EP, appearing as the fourth side. That same year the band was signed to Ramseur Records, a North Carolina-based label, specializing in folk and roots music.
Tickets are available at http://subkirke.com, or talk to David.
Listening to the above video, it is clear that this is a band that thinks carefully about its art. They put things together well, and keep the levels down on much of the instrumental work, pushing the vocals into the foreground. Music that you’re supposed to listen to the words? Amazing. Here are a few reviews of the band from bigger sources:
…There, by the heat of a wood stove, they became Breathe Owl Breathe and honed their sound—a wild rumpus of harmony and rhythm—and named their debut after its birthplace. While some peers have reveled in reinvigorating the old, weird side of Americana, the band’s flare for pop-addled melodies flips the contemporary folk aesthetic, eschewing freakiness in favor of charm. It’s a dynamic built on coupling clever arrangements with lyrical whimsy.
- Ashley Melzer, Paste Magazine, June|July 2010
…They carry the tendencies of such a natural feel and an under-the-sun mood that makes them seem like they are ready to eat, ready to handle. There are coos, the kinds of sounds we’d associate with owls – fittingly enough, and there are breaths that are turned into other outbursts that we’d be perfectly alright hearing out in the woods, surrounded by nothing but a darkness filled with all kinds of sounds whose origins are mysteriously concealed. Middaugh and Moreno-Beals spin splendidly together, yoking these achingly beautiful attitudes about the countryside dealing with the corruption of the ever-encroaching urban expansion, as well as a sense that there’s something wearisome about all of the thinking about it to soft-sung words of prettiness. Middaugh sings, “She turns to me on the drive and says, “This city is alive,” and he means the sighs and the groans that are heard. These are the signs of escape that seem obvious and they sound like still-life, holding its pose for us to gander at, for Breathe Owl Breathe to paint us through.
- Sean Moeller, Daytrotter, April 2010
I can’t wait to hear them in our sanctuary. They’re going to sound great. I hope to see you there, too!
The band that is opening is called Elephant Micah. It’s just a guy and his guitar, and he’s quite good, too:
24 of pieces of art that explore the story of “The Father and His Two Sons” will be on exhibit at South Bend CRC for six weeks beginning September 23.
Larry Gerbens collected the pieces of this exhibit and enjoys speaking to different groups about the collection and its significance. Dr. Gerbens will speak about the art and the biblical story at our September 25 adult church school gathering. Each work of art visually interprets the parable of the Prodigal Son, a story that has inspired artists for centuries. Themes such as greed, regret, repentance, forgiveness, jealousy, reconciliation and self-righteousness can be seen. Well known artists included in the collection range from Rembrandt to Tissot to Thomas Hart Benton.
Following a successful career as an ophthalmologist, Gerbens became more and more interested in art and artists. He says, “I have come to love working with artists and encouraging their artistic gifts in the commissioning process.” Larry and Mary Gerbens, a Grand Rapids, MI couple began collecting the work in 1984 after Larry read “The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming,” by Henri Nouwen. The Gerbens donated the works on The Father and His Two Sons to their alma mater, Calvin College, in 2008. Calvin now makes the collection available free of charge for temporary exhibitions in galleries, museums and various institutions, including churches.
The entire collection may be previewed on Calvin College’s website: http://www.calvin.edu/centerartgallery/collection/prodigal/
Families are the strongest faith influence in the lives of kids and teens! That’s why Faith Alive (CRC publishing) developed this for church blog users especially for busy parents and caregivers, or others who play an important role in kids’ lives (like stepparents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles). It’s full of fun, faith-building ideas, articles, and devotions to use at home!
Devotions Don’t Have to Follow Dessert
If you’re one of those on-the-go families who have a hard time pulling off regular family meals, you don’t have to give up on family devotions.
There’s nothing “magic” or sacred about the after-dinner time slot. In fact, when your kids have full stomachs and a whole evening of activities ahead, their attention spans aren’t likely to be at their peak. So give yourself permission to find a time for family devotions that works for you and your kids.
Maybe it’s bedtime, when things are slowing down (if kids think talking with you about God will delay their bedtime, you might be surprised at how chatty they’ll become). Maybe it’s Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. Or right before kids leave for school in the morning—sending them out the door with God on their mind could be a great way to start the day.
Try different options until you hit on the best time for your family to connect with God and each other. You just might discover longer attention spans, quieter moments together, and deeper insights.
Praying with Preschoolers
Prayers like “Lord, bless this food, for Jesus’ sake, amen” are great for getting preschoolers in the habit of praying regularly. But as your child grows, her prayer vocabulary should grow too. Here are some creative ways to make prayer a part of your preschooler’s life:
Prayer jar: One mom created a prayer jar for her preschool daughter to use. Here’s how. First, simply write prayer topics on slips of paper. (Be specific and concrete: instead of “Bless all the sick people” write “Please help Grandma’s hip to heal.”) If your child is old enough to help brainstorm the prayer topics, work on it together. Put the slips of paper in a jar with a mouth wide enough to get your hand inside. When it’s time to pray, ask your child to choose one or more slips from the jar, and pray for those items together.
Simple refrains: To involve the whole family, adults and older children can introduce prayer topics (“Lord, please be with the people in Somalia who don’t have enough food to eat”) and young kids can respond with a refrain like “Thank you, Lord, for hearing our prayer.”
Prayer circle: Sit on the floor or around a table. Hold hands, and have each person at the table say one thing he or she is thankful for. End with a simple song of thanks your whole family can sing.
Praying with Elementary School Kids
When life is crazy, as it often is with young kids, we sometimes forget that God is right there, ready to help—anytime and anywhere! Here some are ideas for praying with elementary school-age kids:
Stop, Drop, and PRAY: During battles and worries, stop what you’re doing, drop everything, and talk to God. During one awful day, Mom sent Marissa to her room three times—the last time both were in tears. After a few minutes and a good cry, Mom calmly entered Marissa’s room and said, “Marissa, we’ve had a rough day. I think we need to pray. They held hands and prayed together for patience, good humor, and forgiveness.
Popcorn Prayer: One person begins and ends the prayer, pausing in the middle so that others may “pop” in and pray, like popcorn kernels popping in the pan. This prayer style is great for families or groups that include shy kids.
Clockwise Prayer: At dinner, in the car, or in the living room each person prays for the person to the left. If there’s time, reverse order and pray again.
Moving Prayer: While you’re on a walk or in the car, silently pray for the people you pass. Or make a list of people you see, and then pray for them aloud when you get home.
Prayer Planner: Write down family prayer requests and needs in a planner, calendar, or smartphone. Don’t forget to thank God for answered prayers!
Praying with Teens
When it comes to teens, the same person may appear at your devotional time each day—but not the same personality! Use the following ideas to help make your devotional time more of a blessing than a battleground.
Engage everyone. Invite each person to read a portion of Scripture aloud. (Accept the fact that your teen may intentionally read in monotone.) Or have one person read the narration of a Scripture story while others read the words of the characters in that story. You can also take turns reading a psalm one line at a time so that it sounds like it’s being read by one voice.
Ask open-ended questions that require more than one-word answers. Some examples: What do you wonder about this story? Which person in the story can you relate to the most and why? Where did you see God in that story? Listen to teens’ perspective and let them know you appreciate their insights.
Get creative. Find unique ways to spend time with God. Consider creation and what God is doing in culture as you view and discuss a talk from www.Ted.com together. Watch and listen to a praise song on YouTube; better yet, ask your teen to find one that the family can watch! Pray out loud with your teen before he or she starts a new job and when handing over the keys to the car.
Be open to discussion. Christian parents want their kids to have a deep faith, one that moves beyond black-and-white answers, one that they can hold on to when life gets tough. In order to do that kids need to make the faith you’ve been passing on their own. Don’t panic when they have questions or express doubts. Resist the temptation to lecture your teens or tell them what to believe. Be honest about your own questions—and your faith that God knows the answers.
On September 15, Ben Sollee is coming to Subkirke. We have been trying for nearly two years to host him, as he seems to be a particularly good fit for our venue. He focuses on acoustic sounds, and has a fine ear. He is a classically trained ‘cellist who brings his ‘cello training and skill as well as his excellent voice to Indie Rock. Watch for example, this video of him performing “Teach Me,” live at the Bonnaroo Music festival.
Sollee’s interest in music is more than just as an occupation. He sees art and life as intertwined. This is from his biography:
Ben Sollee wants you to experience all the beauty and banality that life has to offer. It’s a serious request, and his enthusiasm is genuine. Armed with a cello, Sollee is canvassing the country, sometimes by bicycle, imploring folks to rediscover the connections between music, art, film, dance, their community, and personal relationships.
These factors ultimately translate to the mindset and making of Ben’s new project – Inclusions. Beyond bridging genres and demographics with earnest, dynamic songwriting and passionate performances, Ben Sollee seeks to intertwine his music with art and life.
The concert, on September 15 at 8:30 PM, promises to be very exciting. Hope to see you there!
Maps & Atlases is an Indie Rock band from Chicago whose style has been called Math Rock. Even though they already performed at Subkirke in March of this year, their performance was so exceptional we wanted to bring them back. They are extremely talented musicians whose technical abilities help them to create dazzlingly difficult-to-play-music with beautiful melodies that get stuck in your head for a week. Listen, for example, to the excellent guitar work in these two songs:
The lead singer and guitar player, Dave Davison, has been described as one of the most innovative and exciting singers in America today, and their current album, Perch Patchwork, is described as extravagantly complicated guitar work, unusual drum patterns, and bursts of bass showcase flawless technique; more than ever, these are seamlessly integrated with tempo and key changes. Layered with harmony and powered by Dave Davison’s strong vocals (at times resembling Cat Stevens’), the record develops a consistent atmosphere that’s calm and pleasant.
Their upcoming show on September 8 will be an excellent show. Local Notre Dame band Ratboy will open for Maps & Atlases. (Check out Ratboy here.) Tickets for the show are already available at Subkirke’s website, and will be available at the door. The doors open at 7:30, concert starts at 8:30. Hope to see you there!
This entry is about congregational care and Small group ministry. Some of us remember the days in the CRC when elders and the pastor came to visit individual households each year to inquire about the spiritual care of each person in their church. As a child, I remember those visits being very tense in our home, with each of us asked questions about our life and faith, seated for an uncomfortable length of time in the adult company and trying to be on our best behavior. SBCRC has not conducted home visits for many years, and we have tried several methods to supply good congregational care to our members.
The ultimate goal of congregational care is discipleship – helping people mature in Christ. This too is the ultimate goal for the annual home visit, even though few churches do this well consistently. For this reason, many churches, including ours have moved toward small group ministry.
Not only have cultural patterns changed over the years; there are significant differences between the annual home visit and the small groups. Small groups are not simply an alternative to the annual home visit; I believe small groups are much more effective at the task of discipleship to which Jesus calls every believer. Note some of the important differences:
Annual Home Visit – Small Group
1. once a year – 35 times a year
2. provides a snap-shot of spiritual state – provides on-going spiritual monitoring
3. done by officebearers – done by members
4. more difficult to build relationships – easier to build relationships
5. in homes of those visited – in homes of all participants
6. unable to meet chronic life challenges – able to meet chronic life challenges
7. tends toward relational awkwardness – tends toward relational authenticity
8. makes the discipleship visit hard – makes discipleship routine and easier
9. awkward to follow up – natural to follow up
10. difficult to do well – easier to do well
11. training tools are hard to come by – training tools are easily accessible
12. embedded in the Reformed tradition – embedded in the Scriptures
13. top-down feeling – peer-group feeling
14. stresses responsibility of officebearers – stresses responsibility of the individual
15. usually anticipated nervously – usually anticipated eagerly
16. leadership vested in the officebearer – leadership is shared
17. holds those visited accountable – holds everyone accountable
18. formal atmosphere – informal atmosphere
19. focus on needs of the church – focus on the needs of the individual
20. the Scriptures are read – the Scriptures are studied
21. slower to respond to needs – quicker to respond to needs
Our leaders weighed the advantages of small group ministry and decided two years ago that primary congregational care will be delivered through small groups, and consequently we now intentionally pursue effective small group development. This list just reaffirms our conviction that we took the correct path for SBCRC. If you wish to be in a small group, or change to another group, there will have opportunity on the upcoming Sundays in August.
Over the last couple of months we’ve had various announcements in the bulletins and things mentioned in services related to the youth program. I’m going to try to summarize a lot of that here. However I’m likely to miss some things or fail to answer questions that you might have. So please take advantage of the comment section at the bottom of this post to ask those questions, and we will try to answer them in short order.
THIS SUMMER
The first thing that should be said is that things are moving forward quite nicely. Six youth from our church will be participating in “Summer of Service” starting tomorrow. Running from June 16-19, SOS brings together youth from churches around the area representing a range of churches for four days of service, worship, fellowship, and fun. A special thank you to Korynne Bolt for serving as the group leader. Please keep this event in prayer.
In addition, as most of you know, we have been blessed to have Ryan Shreiber Kelly and Jeff Bain-Conkin as our youth leaders over the summer. Not only are all three seminary graduates, they’re all a lot of fun. What are the chances? (Slim. Trust me.) Stay tuned for more information about summer gatherings.
BIGGER PICTURE
Early this year, we formed a Youth Ministry Task Force to discuss the state of our youth ministry and clarify its vision. Over the course of our discussions, it became clear that effective youth ministry requires that the youth see the church not simply as something they attend but something they are. They must know themselves to be the church. This understanding comes less by instruction than by lived experience. In this sense understanding oneself as part of the church resembles understanding oneself as part of a family. One’s identity as a family member is not acquired through a lesson on genetics or state laws regarding guardianship. Sharing meals, going on vacation, getting tucked in at night– these kinds of experiences and others establish one’s identity as a family member.
In large part, youth ministry is the task of cultivating within youth a similar identity with the church. As such, it is a collective task–undertaken by the staff, parents and other adults, as well as the youth themselves. We all work to instill within youth a sense of belonging.
Every interaction and activity can serve to either cultivate or inhibit that sense of belonging. However, for our purposes here, we stress the importance of three things in giving youth a sense of belonging. We want our youth to have: (1) meaningful relationships with their peers, (2) meaningful relationships with adults, and (3) meaningful roles to play within the church community.
This is not to diminish the other components of the Christian life (i.e. worship, devotional habits, understanding Scripture and church teaching, acts of service). We would simply argue that youth that lack this sense of belonging are much less likely to make these other components integral to their lives.
YOUTH PASTOR
While maintaining that youth ministry is our shared task, there remains a need for a staff person devoted specifically to it. Does it require a full-time staff member? We have learned that there are various rules of thumb on this question. For example, one is that you should have one full-time staff person for every fifty youth. At this point, we have about half that. So at this point the position will remain 1/2 time.
We do not plan to have the position filled for the long term this fall. Our hope is that over the next couple of months we will be able to hire an interim who will remain in the position for the following year.
Why an interim?
The short answer is that we are not ready to hire someone for the long term. First of all, we need to clarify what it is we want from our youth pastor. It’s easy to want everything– someone who’s great with the youth, their parents, and the staff, who can train volunteers, cast a vision, lead large groups and connect one-on-one, plan a mission trip, attract non-believers and articulate Reformed doctrine. And do it as a half-time employee. But, as this very helpful book points out, people like this are in short supply– if they exist at all.
We need time to clarify what we are looking for, what skills are most vital to fostering that sense of belonging. And by “we” I don’t just mean the Youth Ministry Task Force. Unless there is broad consensus as to our priorities and expectations, there’s bound to be a good deal of frustration and confusion to come. Building this kind of consensus will take some time.
While nothing is fixed in stone, I suspect that we will be ready to advertise the position and conduct interviews in January of 2012. This would enable us to hire someone by mid to late spring.
This must come close to the longest post on our blog thus far, so I’ll end it there and again invite your comments.
