abbykk

abbykk

abby king kaiser  //  wandering between art, creativity, justice & faith

 
May 16 / 1:57pm

Summary of Inner East Bay Urban Legacy Convocation

by abby king kaiser
Fifteen congregations from five cities in the inner East Bay gathered on November 12, 2011, for a full day of fellowship, reflection and dreaming.  Following the Urban Legacy Convocation in San Francisco, the Spirit moved in the East Bay to convene a similar gathering. The twenty congregations of Alameda, Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and San Leandro were invited to participate in sharing our stories and dreaming about our legacy through a World Cafe conversation process.  The leadership team--Cal Chinn, George Gilchrist, Abby King-Kaiser, Monte McClain, and Sarah Reyes--hoped for a day as inspired as San Francisco’s but with the flair of the East Bay.  

The day glorified God through the diversity of our stories, the breadth of our discipleship and the desire to deepen our ministry in the communities we serve.

We serve...
Just over 750,000 people in five cities

Alameda, Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and San Leandro


Our communities are diverse.
Hills and flats, port and marina, neighborhoods with horse trails, neighborhoods with bike trails, neighborhoods sidewalks that require off-road capable strollers.  The area we serve is geographically large with a great deal of variation.  Life expectancy can vary almost fifteen years in the area based on where you live.#  Some of our churches serve a city where almost 70% of the residents have a Bachelor’s degree.# Some of our churches serve neighborhoods where “43 percent of residents over the age of 25 do not have a high school diploma and the dropout rate is 40 percent.”#

Our communities are dense.
Neighbors, on top of neighbors, on top of neighbors. Some parts of our region have as many as 10,000 people per square mile.  The least dense communities are still as dense as many cities in the middle of the country.  Our proximity to each other means that there is always mission and ministry to do, always community to build, always new people to reach.  

Our communities are global.
25-45% of the households in the East Bay speak a language other than English.#  A minimum of thirty languages are spoken in the area, by some counts, as many as eighty.  Immigrants, refugees, people seeking asylum all come to the East Bay looking for many of the blessings some of us experiences.  Some are disappointed, finding violence and poverty as bad or worse than where they came from.#  We are connected by Twitter, Facebook and Skype to family, friends and strangers all over the world, and yet Internet access is certainly no universal.

Our communities are in need.
About fifteen percent of the inner East Bay falls below the federal poverty line,# (quick facts) but two in ten families are not economically self-sufficient.#  Our people need better education at all levels, increased access to health care, dignified work, clear roads to citizenship, affordable housing and more.

Our communities are unique and innovative.
The East Bay is a hot bed for food, for music, for art, for culture in a,, its manifestations.  We are the home of Alice Waters, Maxine Hong Kingston, Green Day.  Booby Seale and Gertrude Stein, Oscar Grant and Johannes Mesherle, Jerry Brown and MC Hammer, Bruce Lee and Julia Morgan. Chevron and Sungevity.  Clorox and Green for All. Nobel Laureates are educated and teach here, just up the hill from an animated movie studio, which is just up the shoreline from one of the West Coast’s busiest ports.  Street art, hip-hop, chess, farming, protesting--we take it all, innovate it and make it our own.  

It is a blessing to be called to follow Christ here.

It is a blessing to tell the stories of our faith and our communities to those who live nearby but may feel a world away.

We are discerning, but we are also confused.

We seek the will of God in our congregations, we seek to discern the gifts of others, to be open and welcoming, and yet church doesn’t always go as planned.  What we think will solve our problems doesn’t always or we don’t the growth and response that we expect.  We try to remain open and creative, but over the long haul, can get tired and frustrated.  We can’t see people’s passion for God, and can mistake other ways of connecting to God for being disinterested.

In the midst of it all, we may feel disoriented.  We are challenged by the call to do ministry in this context and culture.  How to we minister to a community that speaks many languages?  That lives in many cultures?  How we do see ourselves in relationship to our community what few of our people come from the neighborhood?  We all have our own questions and struggles as congregations, but seek to come out of this isolation to weave it all together for greater strength.  

We have blessings and we have baggage and sometimes we can’t tell the two apart.

Our buildings give us presence and shape our identity but can eat up our time and energy and resources.  Our history helps to root us in tradition but can be hard to let go of to.  Our locations have built a particular community but also have restrictions that we feel like hold us back. Our successes gave us a sense of identity but can be as difficult to move beyond as our failures.

We love Jesus, but we don’t always know what it means to be a Presbyterian.

And yet, we share leadership.  We are most proud of our work together when our pastors and our Sessions work together, when lay leadership is encouraged, inspired, nurtured and filled with the Spirit.  We seek to empower others by our work.  We are faithful as leaders and our leaders are faithful, when their leadership leaves a legacy, when they work themselves out of a job.  Relationship with God and with each other is our foundation.

Presbyterian is a way of leading, facing not just inward but outward.  

We can have trouble connecting across generations, across cultures, across difference.  And yet, when we find common ground, we find the Spirit.

We value our diversity, our shared values, our common faith, our desire for justice and equality.  We need to deepen our relationship to God’s word, we need to commit ourselves to each other’s spiritual formation, and sometimes we just need to get out of our own way.

We need to listen, to be accountable to each other, to equip each other, to realize that we are in the struggle together.

We can be like the staff of Moses--used by God and powerful at the same time.

All of this is part of how we love out our Presbyterian identity and our discipleship of Christ.  This is our legacy to our communities.

We resist change and we embrace change.  We are in transition.

Small is beautiful.  Big is beautiful.  Everything in between is beautiful.  As the church is in transition in the greater culture and many of our congregations are in transition in our particular contexts, we have to re-frame and re-think our identities.  We are not who we once were.  We can be successful and letting go, celebrating our past, and living into the future, but it is hard.  It is also happening around the East Bay.

We face scarcity and competition.  We face decline, irrelevancy and outdated models of working.  And yet, thinking about ourselves this way can be a hopeless framing of our story by a culture of fear.  The Gospel tells a different story and the resurrection offers another way.

That is the story we tell when we come together.

Summary Written by Rev. Abby King-Kaiser, January 2012

Special Thanks to Rev. Cal Chinn, Rev. Charie Reid, Elder Linda Lee and Rev. Monte McClain for their thorough notes
 
May 15 / 4:11pm

shifting notions of success

by abby king kaiser
Imag0628

in our consumerist, achievement driven meritocracy, rarely (ever?) do we work on something for it's own sake, and not because we expect to succeed.  one of the ways that the church is called to be counter-cultural in this environment is to shift notions of success/failure not just for our own institutions, but for our personal lives and our culture at large.

pastoring a church to closure challenges all my notions of failure and success.  on the one hand, i knew going into this job that this was a significant possibility.  i walk around talking about how our church is not failing.  failure would be ignoring our realities, wasting away into nothing, or living in various states of organizational denial.  i talk about how the church can be successful as it closes, using this as a chance to faithfully live into the resurrection.  

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?" ... john 12:24-27

i really believe this.  sometimes, we have to let go, we have to let die, we have to surrender, to God's bigger love, God's bigger imagination, God's bigger creativity in order to grow into the beloved community.

it is one thing to preach the gospel, we all know it is a whole different deal to live it.

walking with my congregation to closure is challenging all of my notions of success, and so, given my background our culture (did i say i was almost always an A+ student? or that at my high school, the class rank was determined by grades... in gym?), it is also challenging my notions of self.

going into ministry, "success" was never a notion that entered my head.  i didn't think there was such thing as a "successful" way to serve, i just wanted to serve.  i also knew that failure was part of the package.  i had gotten used to failure in my training--sermons that totally flopped, standing back during worship to realize that something just didn't work, getting over yourself to learn how to speak in front of a group, dropping activities that no one comes to, trying, trying, trying again.  i felt like failing was one of my best skills.  but, i didn't realize how easy it is to fail when the failures are small--and thus can add up into larger success.  yes, not all of my art or design for worship worked.  every time that didn't work helped to improve the times that did.  so, overall i felt successful.  same with preaching.  yes, i was terrible when i started.  i hit an occasional sermon right on, but most of the were mediocre or worse, but with an supportive community that helped me to learn, all my little failures equaled long term success--growth into a more effective, more faithful, deeper preacher.

and i want to learn and grow, and so generally, i am able to measure my "success" by my ability to learn and grow, despite outcomes.

but... but... but...

in real life, it is not so cut and dry.  it is difficult to tease a part my sense of self, my sense of success, my sorrow and heart break, and my experience of the divine in this midst of this closure process.  it is all mixed together.  i am sad.  i am proud--that my congregation has taken a bold step and it doing it together.  i am amazed--that the body of christ has held us up in the way i have experienced.  i am moved, almost every day.  i am  heart broken, i am a little depressed, and i fear that i have lost myself in this.  i fear that i have failed--my congregants, my colleagues, my God.

as i try to tease it all a part, i had begun to realize how deeply embedded our cultural notions of success are in our church.  we value institutions.  we value permanence.  we value big impact--the best voice, the sexiest man alive, the biggest IPO ever, the most profitable opening weekend ever.  keep your job, buy a house, achieve, achieve, achieve. though i don't know many people who want to "climb the corporate ladder" of the church, most that i know want a pulpit to preach in every week, they want people who come to church regularly, and they want to grow their church. these are notions of success that very much mirror our culture's notions of success.

success for my congregation right now might be...
- deepening our experience of God between now and closure
- noticing the divine moving in all of the moments in the next few months
- taking good care of each other
- noticing who has been forgotten and taking care of them too
- understanding our story in the context of the gospel and the resurrection
- recognizing our grief and not running away from our sorrow
- imagining a different and faithful future

so maybe it is success is not an option at all.  but neither is failure.

i need to cultivate the ability to work for something that is good, not just that will be a "success."  i thought i had that.  in that last few months, i have realized how much deeper i need to grow that capacity... and how deeply rooted that kind of hope is in my faith.

and i need to do it without thinking about how it will make me a better person, a better parent, a better pastor.  i immediately shift back to my achieving, success-driven self that wants to make lemonade out of these lemons instead of just finding the good in the lemons themselves.

i feel like i need to know what is going to sprout... and when and how and for what end... in order to let a kernel fall, die and sprout.  God is challenging me to let go of that and just live with the seed falling.  and knowing that none of it is about success or failure.  those words just don't apply here.



 
May 15 / 9:55am

shifting notions of "success"

by abby king kaiser

Hope

in our consumerist, achievement driven meritocracy, rarely (ever?) do we work on something for it's own sake, and not because we expect to succeed.  one of the ways that the church is called to be counter-cultural in this environment is to shift notions of success/failure not just for our own institutions, but for our personal lives and our culture at large.

pastoring a church to closure challenges all my notions of failure and success.  on the one hand, i knew going into this job that this was a significant possibility.  i walk around talking about how our church is not failing.  failure would be ignoring our realities, wasting away into nothing, or living in various states of organizational denial.  i talk about how the church can be successful as it closes, using this as a chance to faithfully live into the resurrection.  

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?" ... john 12:24-27

i really believe this.  sometimes, we have to let go, we have to let die, we have to surrender, to God's bigger love, God's bigger imagination, God's bigger creativity in order to grow into the beloved community.

it is one thing to preach the gospel, we all know it is a whole different deal to live it.

walking with my congregation to closure is challenging all of my notions of success, and so, given my background our culture (did i say i was almost always an A+ student? or that at my high school, the class rank was determined by grades... in gym?), it is also challenging my notions of self.

going into ministry, "success" was never a notion that entered my head.  i didn't think there was such thing as a "successful" way to serve, i just wanted to serve.  i also knew that failure was part of the package.  i had gotten used to failure in my training--sermons that totally flopped, standing back during worship to realize that something just didn't work, getting over yourself to learn how to speak in front of a group, dropping activities that no one comes to, trying, trying, trying again.  i felt like failing was one of my best skills.  but, i didn't realize how easy it is to fail when the failures are small--and thus can add up into larger success.  yes, not all of my art or design for worship worked.  every time that didn't work helped to improve the times that did.  so, overall i felt successful.  same with preaching.  yes, i was terrible when i started.  i hit an occasional sermon right on, but most of the were mediocre or worse, but with an supportive community that helped me to learn, all my little failures equaled long term success--growth into a more effective, more faithful, deeper preacher.

and i want to learn and grow, and so generally, i am able to measure my "success" by my ability to learn and grow, despite outcomes.

but... but... but...

in real life, it is not so cut and dry.  it is difficult to tease a part my sense of self, my sense of success, my sorrow and heart break, and my experience of the divine in this midst of this closure process.  it is all mixed together.  i am sad.  i am proud--that my congregation has taken a bold step and it doing it together.  i am amazed--that the body of christ has held us up in the way i have experienced.  i am moved, almost every day.  i am  heart broken, i am a little depressed, and i fear that i have lost myself in this.  i fear that i have failed--my congregants, my colleagues, my God.

as i try to tease it all a part, i had begun to realize how deeply embedded our cultural notions of success are in our church.  we value institutions.  we value permanence.  we value big impact--the best voice, the sexiest man alive, the biggest IPO ever, the most profitable opening weekend ever.  keep your job, buy a house, achieve, achieve, achieve. though i don't know many people who want to "climb the corporate ladder" of the church, most that i know want a pulpit to preach in every week, they want people who come to church regularly, and they want to grow their church. these are notions of success that very much mirror our culture's notions of success.

success for my congregation right now might be...
- deepening our experience of God between now and closure
- noticing the divine moving in all of the moments in the next few months
- taking good care of each other
- noticing who has been forgotten and taking care of them too
- understanding our story in the context of the gospel and the resurrection
- recognizing our grief and not running away from our sorrow
- imagining a different and faithful future

so maybe it is success is not an option at all.  but neither is failure.

i need to cultivate the ability to work for something that is good, not just that will be a "success."  i thought i had that.  in that last few months, i have realized how much deeper i need to grow that capacity... and how deeply rooted that kind of hope is in my faith.

and i need to do it without thinking about how it will make me a better person, a better parent, a better pastor.  i immediately shift back to my achieving, success-driven self that wants to make lemonade out of these lemons instead of just finding the good in the lemons themselves.

i feel like i need to know what is going to sprout... and when and how and for what end... in order to let a kernel fall, die and sprout.  God is challenging me to let go of that and just live with the seed falling.  and knowing that none of it is about success or failure.  those words just don't apply here.

Filed under  //  closing a congregation  
 
May 12 / 10:09pm

congregational letter considering closure

by abby king kaiser
it seems perhaps useful to the wider body to share as much as i can about the closure process at fruitvale presbyterian church. at least, those things that i have written or said or thought, and those things that are public, etc. etc. certainly not everything.

so this letter comes out of context, at least a little out of order. i wrote this to the congregation in between announcing that the discernment team and the session recommended closure and the actual vote.

* * *

The Gospel of Mark’s telling of the resurrection looks little like our Easter celebrations these days.  It is a story fraught with anxiety, confusion and fear.  In it, the women are the faithful disciples, seeking to provide Jesus with the dignity in death that he provided them in life.  But, they find the stone rolled away and their Savior nowhere to be found.  
 
“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” - Mark 16:8

As we face the Resurrection during this Easter season, we also find ourselves trembling and bewildered, but we will not run, silent and paralyzed, away from our future. Instead, we will follow the Risen Christ into the resurrected life, facing our anxiety and moving into a future that God has in store for us as individuals, and for our community.

I write to you as your pastor, as a member of this community for two and half short years, as someone whose heart has been breaking for months as I pour my heart and soul into this congregation.  I write to you in the shadow of the cross, at the foot of the grave, on the road to resurrection.  I write to you as me. These words and thoughts are my own, and nothing more.  But, as your pastor, this is not a time for silence.

 
At worship on Sunday, Session announced that it voted to concur with the finding of the discernment team, recommending to the congregation that we begin the process of closing the worshipping congregation.  On April 22nd, there will be a joint worship service at 10 am, followed by a congregational meeting at 11 am in the sanctuary to take up this issue.
 
As we move towards the meeting, and as we seek God’s will for our congregation and our resources, I want work towards clarity in this complex situation.

- April 22nd will not be our last Sunday.  If we voted to begin closure on the 22nd, we would shift our priorities from making every effort and sacrifice to keep the doors open, to providing dignity to our congregation and care to its members over the last phase of our life together.  The final Sunday of regular worship, as well as a closing celebration, would come later.  Session and the discernment team would solidify a timeline as soon as possible.

- Over the last three years, we have increased our income generated through building use from about $ 4,000 in 2009 to about $25,000 in 2011.  In spite of this significant increase in funding separate from giving, we have continued to see a decrease in our overall income.  We have sought and found funding sources beyond offering, and it has not made a difference.

- The future of the worshiping congregation is a different issue than the future of the building.  Our building is owned by the Presbytery of San Francisco in trust to this particular congregation.  If this congregation no longer exists, the property becomes the Presbytery’s responsibility.  If we seek to close with dignity, we will have the opportunity to consider how the building might continue to serve God’s purposes. It is considered a separate issue.  The building will not necessarily close when the congregation does.

- This decision by Session, as well as the discernment team, is not taken lightly by anyone in the process, nor has it been reached quickly.  When I was hired two and a half years ago, I was told in an interview that the congregation may not be open in two years.  Our decline in attendance, giving, and energy has been going on for at least fifteen years, if not longer.  Last summer, as we inaugurated “the Big Dream” and instituted significant changes in our life together, we knew that these changes may have been our final effort at life together as a worshiping congregation.  Despite many efforts, we continue to see decline in energy for leadership, attendance, and giving.


As we face our future as a congregation and as we live into Easter this season, we don’t have a plan.  We do have faith.  We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know that our Savior has gone ahead of us, and is making the way for us.  We are full of fear, but we are also on the threshold of resurrection.  

The reality of our life together as a congregation is not that this moment is a major loss.  The reality is, that we have already lost a lot.  We have already grieved a lot.  We have seen beloved members die and leave and no one take their place. We have put our whole hearts, our whole faith, our whole energy into ministry that does not bear the fruit we so desperately need.  We have watched our funds, our attendance and our energy decline, not over many months but over many years.  This place we find ourselves at is not the place of death.  It is the place of new life--a time for us to acknowledge these very real losses in our life as a community, and to celebrate the true and deep beauty of God working among us over these many years.  

The tomb on Easter morning was a place of uncertainty and fear.  A place of anxiety and wonder.  A place of possibility.  This is also the place we find ourselves in.  We must cling to the hope in the resurrection, as we carry the fear of standing at the edge of the tomb, with the stone rolled away.  God is calling us to new life--and with courage and faith, we can explore the questions, discern a plan, care for each other, and honor the resurrection by making room for new life on this corner.


Filed under  //  closing a congregation  
 
May 12 / 10:05pm

promised land fantasies // shifts in scripture and self

by abby king kaiser
originally posted on ecclesio.com

Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel:  “I am now a hundred and twenty years old and I am no longer able to lead you. The LORD has said to me, ‘You shall not cross the Jordan.’  The LORD your God himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you will take possession of their land. Joshua also will cross over ahead of you, as the LORD said. And the LORD will do to them what he did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, whom he destroyed along with their land.  The LORD will deliver them to you, and you must do to them all that I have commanded you.  Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”    - Deuteronomy 31:1-6 

I am about two and a half years into my first call.  I am a designated solo pastor of a small Presbyterian Church in Oakland, CA.  I work ¾ time.  I took the call knowing that this congregation had been in decline for almost as long as I had been alive. I took the call following a beloved pastor--young, community driven, an intelligent preacher who had seen many in the congregation through personal crises, a renaissance man of sorts.  In the first months, I was often asked how I dealt with the “myth of Monte,” and my response was that I didn’t.   I was not Monte, I could never be Monte.  I as sought to develop my own pastoral  identity in my first call, I relied heavily on the wisdom in the story of the end of Moses’ leadership.  I was Joshua, too young and too green, but passionate and perhaps skilled, relying on a sense of calling and faith that would both be put to the test.

The fantasy I held at the time was that the Promised Land--a quirky, cute and healthy church that was a pillar of its community, that impacted it city, that had enough money, enough time, enough energy, and that was above all a community of faithful disciples of Christ--was out there and just outside of our grasp.  My job was to keep us walking in the wilderness, inching our way toward the Promised Land.

I anticipated the constantly shifting environment of urban ministry.  I even embraced it.  I loved being a preacher one day, a community organizer the next, a teacher the day after that.  I thrived on the anticipation of what my week would bring.

As I began to dig into the role, even with the job description handed to me with the keys on day one, I quickly realized that I didn’t know how to define my role as pastor.  Where did my leadership end and the lay leadership begin?  When should I do and when should I delegate?  Which of the constant demands were the most pressing, the most relevant, or the most likely to help us keep moving towards the promised land?  As I tried this and that, I waded my way through the role, constantly shifting how I understood what my job was to be.

My coping mechanism in the uncertainty was to do what I felt most “called” to do.  I focused on the ministries that were at the intersection of my gifts and the community’s needs (as a good student of my high school’s service learning program would have).  I worked on deepening the community and discipleship of our youth and young adults, on bringing creativity into worship, on building relationships with the beautifully diverse people who make up our congregation and city.  I found work that fed me and helped me to do the work of the role that was not always my best--preaching week in and week out, attempting to provide guidance and care to those much older than me, performing the symbolic presence of God in worship, in the community and in the lives of our congregation.  The constant shifting empowered me to be a minister, to find confidence in the work I was prepared for so that I could do the work I was unprepared for.  Little by little, the shifting became more fluid and intentional, a direct outgrowth of my faith, my identity and my call.

But what of that Promised Land?  My church still felt like it was just over the horizon, if only... if only... if only.  Gradually, we began to make those “if only” shifts.  If only we had different music, it would bring in new people.  If only we didn’t feel so lost in this big sanctuary.  If only our building brought income instead of being a burden.  If only we could completely change worship...  Our music changed.  Our building has gotten busier and generates income.  We started a new worship service, deeply rooted in our Reformed heritage but geared toward creative conversation and transformation.  And still the decline continued, as did our journey in the wilderness.

In the midst of all of this, my relationship to Deuteronomy 31 shifted.  The scripture that had been an affirmation for me, a confidence builder, began to challenge me with some hard questions.  What if we got the destination wrong?  What if, like the ancient Isrealites, we mis-understood God’s vision for our future, time and time again?  What if I was not Joshua at all?

As I lived with my leadership, as I lived more fully into my call to this particular congregation, I started to see myself as Moses instead of Joshua.  Something happened this winter as I read that text and noticed that Moses said--I am not able.  This is an admission antithetical to the can-do American spirit, antithetical to the vision of the strong and capable young lady pastor that I strive to be. And yet, I imagine that admitting his limitations--being able to articulate and live with what he could not do--was freeing for Moses.  I was empowered by those few words from the man of God--I am not able.  I was empowered to see what I was not able to do.

I am not able to take my church to the Promised Land they envisioned.  No worship service I plan, no outreach initiative I live into, no amount of new relationships with people in the community will complete the journey.  I am not able.

This was a very significant shift in my relationship to Scripture and my relationship to my call.  As I began to realize what I could not do, I was empowered to make more honest decisions in my leadership.  To admit my limitations to our board.  To articulate what I thought I could do--which was to walk the church through a transition, either to closure or to different pastoral leadership (that would likely need to be a different model of leadership altogether).  To begin to speak very difficult truths about our situation from the pulpit.  To listen, because it was one of the most powerful things I am able to do.  And, to re-envision what Promised Land God might be calling us to.

Three years ago, I thought I was called to new church development.  Now, I face the possibility of not being the first pastor of a church, but quite possibly it’s last.  The irony is not lost on me, but now I recognize that the shifting is constant.  It has always been a part of my faith, and will continue to be a part of the way I experience God.  The church I serve has recognized that it can no longer choose whether or not to shift, and so they are working towards intentionally choosing a direction to shift towards.   

The midst of shifts--this is where I experience God.  These days, I am aware of God’s presence often, and for that I am grateful.

Filed under  //  closing a congregation  
 
May 12 / 9:39pm

mothers of the church

by abby king kaiser

scripture: exodus 2:1-10, john 19:25-27


*    *    *

 

conversation starter//sermon...


When I was younger, I thought there was one way to get wisdom from the Bible.  I kind of treated it like a magic eight ball.  I had a specific question, and I would go to it looking for a specific answer.  When I was a teenager, that meant using a fancy study bible marketed to fifteen year olds that would tell me where all the relevant scriptures on fighting with my siblings were.  

 

Turns out, this method yielded very little long term fruit.  Most of what I needed from scripture couldn’t be formed into the specific questions, and very often the specific questions I had were never addressed anywhere in scripture.  

 

When I became a mother, I needed companionship for the journey.  I needed to be reminded that parenting was a calling from God, that I was gifted with the responsibility and privilege of raising a daughter, and that I could mother faithfully.  Well, there is no Biblical guide to motherhood, at least not one that makes sense for a working mom in the twenty first century.  So what did Scripture have to offer me?

 

Companions.  Most of what is written about parenting is dry, a little boring, and sometimes just plain wrong by today’s standards.  But, more than writing about parenting, the Bible is full of compelling stories that illustrate the joys and pains, the challenges and opportunities, and above all the realities of parenting with God in mind.  When we look at the whole story, we see woman after woman, full of fierce love, deep compassion, and creative problem solving when it comes to caring for the next generation, both those who are biologically their children and those that they love as if they were related.  The women who mother in the Bible represent the breadth and the depth of the mothering experience in a way that allows all of us to find places to learn how to be a fiercely loving people of God.

 

Moses gets most of the attention throughout Exodus, but the women who raised him, who made his life possible, tell a story of creative and deep love that was willing to go to great lengths to raise him into the leader God called him to be.  When the Pharaoh demanded the lives of the newly born Hebrew boys, the Hebrew midwives outsmarted him, making way for life to flourish anyway.  When Moses was born, his mother managed to hide him for three months.  Anyone who has ever cared for a new born knows how hard that would be.  They are loud.  But she did.  Then she concocted a plan that would not only preserve his life but get him the best care available--while being able to remain in his life as his caretaker.  This is a shrewd, creative and cunning love that understands the way God calls us to protect the most vulnerable, that sees the deep love God has for every life, and that can get a glimpse into the divine imagination for the future.

 

And let us not forget the Pharaoh’s daughter, who had no reason to feel affection for a baby Hebrew boy, who she had been taught to hate.  She found love where only God could have grown it, and translated that love into a defiance that raised the great liberator of the Hebrew people.

 

Without any of these women, Moses would have been lost.  I hope to have a fraction of this love in my life as a parent.  If I can be half the mothering kind that these women were, I will be deeply faithful to God’s call not just to love my own children, but all God’s children.

 

The love given by the mothering kind in Scripture is deep and wide.  Despite what many would have you believe, the Biblical witness defines family very broadly.  All these women were mothers to Moses.  They were all family.  It was a complex and complicated family that could compete with many of the family structures we live in today.  And they were all family just the same.  These women understood the interconnectedness of all God’s children and acted accordingly.  We are called to do the same.

 

Even from the cross, Jesus was inviting us into that kind of deeper relationship as well.  His family gathered with him during his death, but family was not defined by biological relationship.  Rather, family was defined by love.  Jesus, seeing his mother’s grief, specifically invited his most beloved disciple to be his mother’s son, and invited his mother to love him as her own.  This is family--the people who love us more deeply, more fully, more unconditionally than anyone else, whether we are at the foot of the cross or the crest of a mountain.  Family loves deeply, connects deeply, through it all.

 

We are a church family.  Over the years this congregation has seen each other through death and tragedy, through new life and new hope.  Over this years this congregation has grown together, aged together, loved together, grieved together.  In a church family, often we can see our interconnectedness, the way that God has drawn us all together, in ways that we cannot see outside these walls.  For some of us, it is hard to love those biologically related to us as family.  For some of us, it is hard to love anyone as family.  For some of us, we wonder if we have ever had any family at all. And yet, this has been a congregation where families have grown stronger, where people who had been strangers have become family, where mothers with no children have mothered generations, or children have found many more mothers than the one they were born to.

 

God calls us to love, like family.  This is a creative and cunning love, a love that knows no bounds, a love that doesn’t distinguish between DNA and difference, but recognizes the deep humanity and divine fingerprint on each one of ours hearts.  We are all called to love like the Biblical mothers. 

 

Today is mothers’ day.  So, we honor and remember our mothers but we also remember and honor the mothers of this church, those women who--whether they had biological children or not--answered the call to be fiercely and indiscriminately loving.  Who have you seen be a mother in this way in this church?  What women have shown you what it means to spread God’s compassion?  Who reaches out and includes everyone?  

 

Let’s share....


*     *     *

response prayer//litany...


Mothering God
who fiercely loves us
unconditionally and protectively
we thank you
for our mothers
for our mothers in the faith
for all nurturing women,
all the mothering kind.
 
For Eve, who learned from her mistakes
to become the mother of us all.
 
For Hagar, who was cast out
to raise her child on her own.

For Puah and Shiprah, midwives who saved
a generation of Hebrew boys.

For the Egyptian princess, who raised a prophet
as if he were her own.

For Hannah, who saw God’s vision
for her child in spite of her own needs.

For Naomi, who overcame grief
at the loss of two sons to welcome a daughter.

For Elizabeth, whose hope for her child
reached passed her limitations.

For Mary, who raised a Savior.

For all the mothering kind.

For the mothers
who care for us,
who love us,
who see the best in us
always, whether we are children
or have grown into our own;
whether they gave birth to us
or love us as if they did,

For the mothers we miss,
who shaped us
who made us
and who no longer walk with us
on this Earth,
for their joy in heaven.

For the women in our lives
who have been like mothers to us
grandmas, sisters, aunties, friends
teachers, mentors, leaders
all the mothering kind.

For women who hope
for motherhood,
either carrying life now
or waiting for a child.

For all the mothering kind,
O Compassionate God, we pray.
We give you thanks for their love.
We ask your special blessing on their lives.
Help us to see, recognize, and celebrate
all that they do, everyday.
Show us how to honor their love
by passing it along in the world.
Amen.

Filed under  //  sermons  
 
May 11 / 11:51am

more timeline pics

by abby king kaiser

as we share stories over the next four months of worship, my hope is that this will grow.

(download)

Filed under  //  art in worship   closing a congregation  
 
May 10 / 5:11pm

visually remembering, telling and honoring our story

by abby king kaiser

Imag1394

 

Beginning of a timeline in our sanctuary. Will continue to grow.

Filed under  //  art in worship   closing a congregation  
 
May 9 / 10:58am

statement to presbytery re: closure

by abby king kaiser
Christ is Risen.

He is risen indeed!

Allelulia!

Allelulia!

This season of resurrection calls us to remember, to honor, to witness, and to enact the Easter story.  If we truly believe that with love, God conquered death, we must act accordingly.  If we truly believe that Jesus returned to the world, scars intact, to send us out, we must act accordingly.  If we truly believe that there is new life after loss, we must act accordingly.  

The congregation I serve is facing this challenge to the depth of our faith.  On Maundy Thursday, our Session voted to recommend that the congregation begin the closure process.  On Easter, we shared this with the congregation, firmly rooted in worship of the resurrection.  On April 22nd, the congregation voted, by a wide margin to begin the process of closure.

On September 1, you are invited to celebrate the life and ministry of Frutivale Presbyterian Church, and to participate in the sending forth of it’s members.  On September 2, we will hold our last Sunday worship as a congregation.  

We believe in the resurrection and we are acting accordingly.  Though this will be the end of this particular expression of the body of Christ, Fruitvale is living into the challenge of believing that there is new life to come, for us an individual members and for the work of the Kingdom in Oakland.

I wanted to take a minute to thank the presbytery for support in this process so far, and the support I am sure that we will receive in the months to come. Again and again, we have turned to members of presbytery for vision and leadership, and again and again, people have stepped up to walk with us on a difficult journey.  There are more people who have contributed to this journey over the last few decades than I can thank, and so I would just like to name those who have supported us over the last few months.  

We are grateful for Theresa Cho and InHo Kim, and for their leadership of our Session retreat in January. We are grateful for Leonard Nielsen, Sarah Reyes, Monte McClain, InHo Kim and Wanda Barfield for their presence on a discernment team over the last few months.  We are grateful for the attentiveness and responsiveness of Council, COM, and FPOC.  I am grateful for my colleague group and the encouragement and mentoring that I have found there. We are grateful for dozens of pastors and congregations from across the country that have held us up in prayer.
Throughout the last few months, our congregation have become acutely aware of the presence of the body of Christ, of the presence of the Presbytery of San Francisco, in our life as an individual congregation.  This presence is a significant part of what has made it possible to believe in and live into the reality of the resurrection as we face closure.

We hope that at the next presbytery meeting, an administrative commission will be approved.  You will continue to get details about our closure in the months to come. Keep us in your prayers.

And again, thank you for the presence of this body in the life of our congregation.

Filed under  //  closing a congregation