I am so excited and encouraged by our prayer gathering last Friday. We had about 65 folks packed into our home and backyard. Great church planting lessons in flexibility! Many thanks to all who attended, brought dessert, brought coffee. What fun! It was clear that many of us did not know each other well, but we pressed in to prayer and listening to God together for the sake of the community he is building. I am excited to see how our prayers bring us together in mission. I wanted to update you on a few things:
Handouts
At the end of the evening I gave you 2 handouts: “The Unbusy Pastor” by Eugene Peterson and “a short history of Redeemer Church’ by Tim Keller. I gave the Peterson article because I want us to dialogue and wrestle together about my job description as your pastor. We are together in mission but you are calling me to lead the charge. I look forward to our conversations about Peterson’s insights and what we think is best for Arlington. The Keller article provides a case study of a church plant. What things do you like about Redeemer’s history? What gets you excited? What would you do differently? Redeemer has done so many things well, what can we learn from the values that shaped their choices? It is important to me that we have core values that shape our choices.
The handouts will be posted on the outside of the window of Southgate 108. If you did not get them, stop by and pick one up! Please read the handouts before our next gathering. If you have thoughts or responses, feel free to email them at any time or to post them on my blog (more later).
July 9
Our next prayer gathering will be July 9, 7:30pm, Trinity Baptist Church 1815 N. Quincy Street. I will give more info on the format when we get closer. Just wanted you to be able to save the date!!
Trinity Baptist Church
Yesterday Tom and Patty Downie, Laurel and I attended the 11am service at Trinity Baptist Church. We were warmly received. I was asked to give the pastoral prayer-- on the spot. (Ian Hassell asked if I can pray when I haven’t had time to write it out first-- love those Anglican jokes J). They are very open to us renting their building. It is nice, but small (probably seats ~100). We will gather there to pray and talk about it on July 9. Please pray for wisdom and discernment. It is a wonderful open door. We need to know if God wants us to walk through it.
Blog
I am trying out lots of different media as we think about telling our story. You can find a podcast of Saturday night sermons on the TFC website. There is a page on the TFC website dedicated to info on The Arlington Project which is found under ‘connect and serve’ then ‘satellite congregations’. I will try and keep letters like this posted on that page. I also have a very small blog at davidmartinhanke.blogspot.com On it I will try and post info about TAP and also other snippets. I have created a facebook group called ‘The Arlington Project’ but it has no information on it right now. I would appreciate your prayers as we think about telling our story well-- to those inside the church and even more, those outside of it. Thoughts? Post ‘em on the blog!!
Saturday Night Potluck
This Saturday night is our monthly potluck dinner. It starts right after the service-- 6:15pm. I would like to invite you to attend. We need to take advantage of every opportunity we have to connect, talk, and get to know each other. This structure is already in place and is lots of fun. Bring a dish to share. I buy 15 or 20 pizzas for the kids. We’ll provide lemonade and water. This is a great chance to see what we are doing on Saturday night and to get to know our community a little better.
I am excited about the journey we are on together: soon to be good friends, taking on an impossible task, watching the power of God. Pretty fun.
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3 comments:
Nice thoughts David
I had a few thoughts after reading the handouts. First, I thought the "unbusyness" described in the Eugene Peterson handout was compelling. It struck me as a great need not only for the pastor, but also for the congregation in an area as ambitious and fast-paced and image-driven as DC.
Before I had my daughter, I was working 70 hour weeks for an international NGO and couldn't seem to slow down, despite my deep longing to do so. Many of my friends in the NGO and political world seem to feel the same. I think a pastor who models an unbusy, un-self-important life would be a great asset to a congregation in this area.
Second, a few thoughts came to mind after reading the Redeemer history. I liked the idea of profiling the typical attendee very much. Many of my Arlington-native friends are connected in some way to Rock Spring UCC and talk about it as being a cornerstone of Arlington community life. For example, I attended a Community Heroes award ceremony at Ballston Mall last year on Community Day. A friend commented that with the exception of 2 people, everyone giving or receiving awards (about 100 people) was associated with RSUCC.
I know two people who have left RSUCC because they felt that the church forgot Jesus in pursuit of its far-reaching social mission. These are well-educated, politically and theologically liberal people who really want a church that can bring them closer to the person of Jesus. I thought this might be a helpful anecdote in some way as we think about a profile and about what unique needs a new church could meet. I'm not yet sure how it all fits together.
Also in that vein, the blog stuffwhitepeoplelike.com seems to capture the ethos of the typical upper-middle-class Arlingtonian. Obviously, it's not meant to be serious social science, but I think many of the observations are spot-on. I am particularly aware of this whenever I walk around the Clarendon Whole Foods. Again, not sure how it's relevant, but thought I'd put it out there as another thought toward building a profile.
I wanted to add a couple things now that I've slept on what I wrote earlier. Re: stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, I don't mean that we should have the same condescending view of our neighbors as the blogger. Re: my friends who left Rock Spring UCC, they would also be wary of an evangelical church, not so much for its beliefs but for the stigma attached. How do we deal with the fact that in this town, "evangelical" is as much a political term (usually a negative one) as it is a theological one?
Finally, David, Trent and I have been meaning to email all week that we were very moved by last week's sermon. It came in a week when we'd visibly experienced God's faithfulness.
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