Celebrating Music, Love & Action – The SoulFest, will be held August 5-7, 2021 in the picturesque mountains and lakes region of Gilford, New Hampshire at Gunstock Mountain Resort. Gunstock provides an idyllic setting for this one-of-a-kind celebration gathering 8,000 attendees and more than 100 artists and speakers. As New England’s largest Christian music festival, SoulFest has become a summer staple to numerous families throughout the New England Area.
Preparing for the Reformation Commemoration: Conversation Groups
Last fall, Bishop Jim Hazelwood and Cardinal Sean O’Malley announced preparations for a mutual observance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. This participates in the worldwide observance, to be initiated October 31, 2016 by Pope Francis and Bishop Munib Younan, President of the Lutheran World Federation. Locally, along with worship and service projects, Cardinal Sean and Bishop Jim encouraged us to participate in ecumenical discussion groups, saying:
…We seek to witness together to the world. One aspect of this witness is in caring for God’s good creation. Pope Francis’ encyclical On Care for Our Common Home provides a timely opportunity for Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and all our ecumenical partners to gather in small groups to read and discuss it together in an atmosphere of prayer and common faith. We encourage all to do so. Such a time of study, prayer, and ecumenical fellowship will serve as a worthy preparation for our mutual observance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.
Over the next year and a half, the commemoration planning team would like to encourage and support congregations in forming such groups not only in the Boston Archdiocese but all across New England. Some congregations, such as St. John Lutheran in Sudbury, MA, have already studied the Pope’s encyclical. Others are beginning to plan for next year’s programs and may choose a different document to study. Whatever approach is chosen, these discussion groups can be a starting point for joint activities including shared acts of service and, in the fall of 2017, a culminating worship experience.
If you would like to join the conversation, here are some ways to get started:
- Contact leaders of nearby congregations, share the bishops’ letter, and invite them to co-lead a study group with you.
- Choose the location. Will one congregation host? Or is there a public setting available, such as a coffee shop, library or pub? Perhaps a non-church setting will make the group feel more balanced and welcoming even to people not from our congregations.
- Set dates. Joint study such as this could make for a wonderful Lenten activity for 2017!
- Select a text to read together. Suggested options include:
On Care for our Common Home. Pope Francis’ encyclical will certainly be an engaging option with which Christians of all kinds will find common ground.
The Joint Declaration of the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ). This document from 1999 presents a shared consensus between Lutherans and Roman Catholics on the central issue of the reformation.
From Conflict to Communion. This book explores the themes and history of the reformation and explores the work of recent decades in reconciling our two churches.
(All three resources are available for free online and for purchase at Amazon.com and other retailers. Additional resources are listed below.)
- Invite and advertise! Depending on your setting and the text you choose, don’t forget to include other ecumenical partners and the non-church neighbors in your community!
- Share what you are doing! Besides using social media, please also share your plans and stories with our planning team so that we can celebrate this as a region-wide, mutual observance. (You can share your plans by sending them to Pastor Andrew Heisen at pastor_mtolivet@townisp.com. He will be compiling a list of all congregations taking part.)
Hopefully, this cross-congregational opportunity will enrich all of our churches, help us discover common ground, and lead us into other aspects of our mutual observance including joint service projects and liturgical observances – so as to demonstrate our unity through baptism in Christ.
For example, please save the date for New England CityServe, which will take place on May 6, 2017. This initiative will be hosted by UniteBoston, where churches all across the region will be coming together to identify shared missional goals to serve their neighborhoods. The committee is also planning a joint liturgical gathering in Boston for Fall 2017 along with materials for use in local gathering with your local neighbors.
For more information:
More information regarding this and other reformation observances in New England can be found at the website of the Institute for Christian Unity at http://www.instituteforchristianunity.org.
The Commemoration Planning Team would love to hear from you to listen to your ideas and answer questions. We can be reached through Pastor Andrew Heisen of the ELCA at pastor_mtolivet@townisp.com and Dr. Vito Nicastro, Associate Director, Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Archdiocese of Boston, at vito_nicastro@rcab.org.
Additional Resources for Discussion:
ELCA social statement on environment: http://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Caring-for-Creation?_ga=1.195392044.149268272.1454101160
ELCA Bishop’s response to encyclical: http://www.elca.org/Resources/Presiding-Bishop-Messages?_ga=1.259436810.149268272.1454101160
Declaration on the Way, From Conflict to Communion Study Guide, JDDJ and other resources: http://www.elca500.org/articles-and-publications/
“Lutherans Restoring Creation Study Guide” http://www.lutheransrestoringcreation.org/Home/highlights/laudato-si—lutheran-study-guide
Study Guide from Archdiocese of Washington: http://adw.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Laudato-Si-Study-Guide.pdf
Praise God in Times Square
Christian unity–the unity of the Church–comes in more than one stripe. Most often, when Christian unity is discussed, the conversation regards the unity, or desired unity, of the great church communities, traditions, denominations.
But there is another Christian unity–another unity of the Church–equal to or greater than the unity of church communities, and that is the Christian unity of colors, races and ethnicities.
Last summer, in New York City, an evangelistic outreach was held, and, as part of the outreach, there was a concert in Times Square. Matt Redman and his band performed (see below link) and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a color, race or ethnicity not represented in this moving and inspiring moment on behalf of the living Christ.
Enjoy!
Re-posted with permission from Matt Crane, Institute for Christian Unity, http://www.instituteforchristi
A Romans 12 Vision for Unity
Kelsey is a second year intern with Cru campus ministry in Boston. She’s also serving as a UniteBoston Rep on the MIT campus. This year she will be trailblazing a new internship in the northeast called Freedom58, a partnership between Cru and International Justice Mission, to bring Biblical Justice into Christian conversation at universities.
One of my co-workers has pointed out that I’ve caught the “unity bug”. I caught it as a senior at Cornell University, sitting beside my Jewish friend along with 600 Christians and non-Christians in the arts quad for an inter-fellowship Easter service. Two years later, it is Holy week again and I find myself in a small crisis of faith, wondering if this bug I’ve caught is from the Lord. So I asked Him to show me what unity is supposed to look like, and He responded with Romans 12.
“A LIVING SACRIFICE” – OBEDIENCE
The chapter begins, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” When I look back into the Old Testament, asking what a “holy and acceptable” sacrifice looks like, it is clear that God’s desire is for obedience.
It feels, though, like obedience is a bad word in the church today. We obey to an extent, but we are so afraid of legalism that we easily justify disobedience in the name of freedom.
But dream with me for a moment. What if we were all to be true, living sacrifices? David says “the sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart.” The Hebrew word shachah, translated to “worship”, means to lie prostrate. I imagine the best physical description of a broken and contrite heart would be shachah. What if we were all to live our lives prostrate before God, obedient to such an extreme that we let go of our pride, our fear, our personal convictions, our own dreams and aspirations? What if, like Abel, we really were to withhold nothing from God? I see a church, prostrate at the throne of God, with one voice singing “holy, holy, holy is the Lamb.”
“MANY MEMBERS, ONE BODY” – HUMILITY
Next, Paul warns everyone “not to think of himself more highly than he ought, but to think with sober judgment.” The next verse describes a body of many members, paralleling the one Church body comprised of many gifts.
The day before Easter this year, we hosted an Easter Arts and Music Festival at MIT. It was the dream of one visionary student. We didn’t assign it to a particular group or fellowship, but simply said, “we want to worship Jesus and see people saved”. I have never seen anything like what resulted.
In the days leading up to the event, five different universities, three local churches, three campus ministries, and four national ministries gathered on MIT’s campus to pray for souls to enter the Kingdom of God. It didn’t matter that some were speaking in tongues while others were praying “hail Mary’s”. The prayer team, prophet team, food team, worship team, hospitality team, and tree-climbing set-up team all came with no agenda but to humbly serve the vision of one student who wanted to glorify the Resurrected King. One man’s words to me were “I’ve been here from set up to take-down, and I have never seen this before. Every single person’s heart is united. Everyone wants to praise Jesus.”
GENUINE LOVE
At the end of the night, the student who organized the Easter festival was so overcome with gratitude, she commented, “I wonder if they all realize how much I love them.”
Having communicated with all the separate teams, I had to laugh at her and ask, “Do you realize how much they all love you?!”
That night I learned that unity doesn’t happen for unity’s sake. Our goal wasn’t to unite people. It was so incredibly simple- to love Jesus. Because the motivation was clear, genuine, and right, the love that was directed upward at Jesus seemed to rain down on us all, warming our hearts with a true and genuine love for one another.
Romans 12 starts with God’s loving mercy and ends with our brotherly love. There’s the key to unity- it starts and ends with love.