Christmas Eve Family Service invitation & etc (Dec 24, 2013)

Greeting and Welcoming

Come in, my friends – and welcome home.

Home of our children’s stories.

Home of the family’s spiritual growth together – of mother and son, grandmother and granddaughter, father and mother, in love and faith.

This evening is home to the story of the birth of baby Jesus, the crowded inn, the singing of the angels, the haste of the shepherds with the good news: Jesus is born!

Here, in the warmth and light of the candles, in music and with children’s drama, the story unfolds again.

The story makes room for us again.

The wings of the angels – the wings of our children – welcome us again. In the waning edge of the year, we will create a time that will reveal the holy in our midst.

With glory, with wonder -

Welcome everyone. Welcome home.

(I am Ha Na Park, the minister in title at Chemainus United Church, where we all are ministers in Christ. For those of us who are not familiar with our church building, you can find the washroom at the left side of the sanctuary (pointing at the place).

And we understand that even baby Jesus cried in his mother’s arms. Please feel at home even if your babies cry during the service, or your little ones start exploring this place. If you need a nursery, please use our Sunday School room, on the right of the sanctuary. (Pointing at the door.) And, please check that your cell phone is off, so that we can only hear angel’s voices in the heavens and here – our children. Thank you.)

Now, as we prepare our hearts to receive the wonder of God’s love, let us sing our joyful praises to God, by singing together O Come All Ye Faithful.

Invitation of Offering

Now, it is time for the offering. During the offering, we will hear our children singing, “Still, still, still, one can hear the falling snow.”

I believe that the offering is a way to help God’s grace and love transform our world with our gifts, no matter how small they may be.

By offering our gifts, we can help God to change our world to be a more peaceful home for every child to live in with hope and joy.

Benediction

We are being sent out into the world

As messengers of the Good News of Christmas.

We are sent out to reflect God’s love.

We have been blessed with the gift of a child.

Let us go now and be a blessing to others.

Sermon - We Don't Spring Back - Advent 1 (Dec 1, 2013)

Sermon: We Don’t Spring Back

Text: Romans 13:11-14

Today’s scripture from Romans tells us, “Know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you. … For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”

Buddhists believe that there is no permanent substance that we can call “Self” with a capital S. Between the former self and the next, who are we in transition?

We Christians believe and profess that we follow Jesus – the crucified and risen one. We bear witness that our lives as Christians should follow the example of Jesus – not just the selfless love, but the crucifixion, death and resurrection, as well. It is the journey in which we are all invited to participate from the moment we are baptised.

Now let me ask a question for us to reflect on as we begin our journey of Advent – What time is it for us now? Is it now the moment for us?

Recently I had a conversation with a church member. In the midst of our deep sharing, she asked how she could find hope when one day she sat and counted and realized that she had lost twenty-two people that she loved and cherished within just the past two years. Loss after loss, each one terrible on its own, all of them together creating a void of sadness. What time now would it be for her and for us, as we remember and revisit and recollect our memories of our loved ones – our friends and family members - who are still close to us in spirit in spite of their clear and obvious absence?

This week, I had my final internship evaluation process almost done, and I had to really face that my internship is coming to a close. I was quite emotional, thinking how much love I have received from this lovely congregation, lovely YOU, and how our love would continue to transform us all into the future. What time is it now for me and for you and for us in this crucible journey, in this intense, loving relationship of growth and change?

On October 17th, many of us suddenly received an email or phone call and heard the news that David had experienced a cardiac arrest in Vancouver and was in critical condition; on hearing this, many ended up in tears, including myself. We prayed with our whole hearts, but we also considered the possibility that we might hear bad news, the worst news. Yet, David was revived, came back home only a couple of weeks later, walking into our sanctuary like Lazarus on the first Sunday of November, with the love of his life, Lenore at his side.  He welcomed us into his story of new-given life. What time was it then and is now for him and Lenore and their family and for us in this miracle – thank God for our doctors and nurses, but this was more than a medical miracle. This is a moment and process – so intense, it becomes transformative – that the experience changes our perspective on our life in the present and for the future and for our relationships: who are we with? What time are we living in? We can’t take granted for any minute, any relationship, after this experience of new life given through death.

When we reflect on our lives, we see every moment has a potential that can be enlightened and given full meaning by our witness of crucifixion, death and resurrection.

In the meantime, in this process of breaking, in this process of trans-figuration, we don’t SPRING BACK to who we were; we TRANSFORM to who we are to be. We always have something that we can learn from one another, guidance and wisdom, in this time of transformation.

A Filipina woman, Ninotchka Rosca, wrote a short article after the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Haiyan. She said “calling Filipinos resilient is an insult.” Here’s a quote:

“It was difficult to see and hear those words repeated in media reports, articles, military and even White House briefings: The Filipino people are resilient. A characterization which should raise anyone’s hackles, with its images of a jelly blob, quivering when punched, then quieting back to what it was before the rain of blows; sans sharpness, inert and passive, non-evaluating of what happens to its self. No, we are not resilient.”

I believe that the next part tells a piece of truth about we all experience in any hard transition for transfiguration, transformation. Rosca continues on, saying,

“WE BREAK, when the world is just too much, and in the process of breaking, are transformed into something difficult to understand. Or we take full measure of misfortune, wrestle with it and emerge transformed into something equally terrifying.”

“This is in sync with our indigenous worldview, expressed by our riddles, on which every Filipino child used to be raised: an understanding of reality, including ourselves, as METAMORPHIC (or capable of transformation.)”

A leaf by night; 

a bamboo stalk by day.

- is how we look at ourselves. It is both what is and isn’t.

WE DON’T SPRING BACK. WE TRANSFORM.” The quote finishes here.

You can ask me for the full text of her article. She has more to say. Here is another testimony from our Christian community that I hope can guide us into a perspective that shines a light on what it means to be transformed and to transform.

Rev. Michael Lapsley, director of the Institute for Healing of Memories in Cape Town, South Africa, gave his testimony to the audiences of a big assembly of the World Council of Churches that was held in Busan, Korea, just one month ago. He said, “Please allow me to bear witness to my own journey of crucifixion, death and resurrection – a journey we are all invited to participate in through and since our baptism.”

In 1990, when the Reverend Lapsley was continuing to combat apartheid in South Africa, the same year that Nelson Mandela was released from jail after 27 years of imprisonment, the Apartheid state sent him a letter bomb hidden inside the pages of two religious magazines. He said, “As you can all see, I lost both of my hands, an eye and had damaged ear drums and…and. In the midst of great pain, I felt that God was with me. God had not stepped in and said ‘it is a bomb, don’t open it’. I OPENED IT. To me the great promise of scripture had been kept – “Lo I am with you always to the end of the age.” I felt that Mary who watched her son being crucified understood what it was that I was going through.”

The next part of his testimonial sermon is what I have been hoping to share for nearly two weeks and here it is. He said, “So today, I choose to walk beside others on their journey of healing – through the Institute for Healing of Memories. When I was in hospital coming to terms with the permanent character of my disability, I remembered once seeing an icon which showed Christ with one leg shorter than the other. The icon picked up the Isaiah 52 and 53 passages that the Messiah was marred beyond human semblance – disfigured... that none would desire him.”

I believe that I should stop here – I feel that I have given you a lot of material for thoughts and reflections. But let me make a sharp point here: we don’t spring back. We transform, all the more in the hardest circumstances we face and go through – we metamorphose like the Filipinos. We transform, sheltered by the God who is the ground of our being. Our hardest moments point us to the death of our ‘selves’ with a capital S and the need to compass our way to a new life, that we may have never expected or imagined before. Our heartbreak is like Mary watching her son being crucified, but still we transform with Christ. We transform into hope that can resurge only when we accept that we transform. Well, this is the time for that transformation, that hope. Advent is the time for it, not simply waiting for a holiday but for a transformation. May the Christ, our Lord and Saviour, who teaches us the way to resurrection through crucifixion and death, bless us with all our pains and challenges and cries and hopes. May this be the Advent blessing for us all this morning. Amen.

Prayers and Children's Time - Advent 1 (Dec 1, 2013)

Welcoming:

Good morning.

We see the white roofs every morning these days, and the white frosts that gently touch and lay on the grass, and they tell us what season we are entering - not just early winter, but the season of waiting, the season of hope, the season of seeking the Light of Christ in the midst of a dark night’s silence.

Welcome to Chemainus United Church’s first Advent Service of the year. This Sunday we begin our journey of Advent; In the end we will arrive at the mystery of Christmas, which is not just a simple holiday for us Christians. It is a time when we see a ray of light in the darkness, hear the message in the silence, anticipate the suffering of Christ that is not yet unrevealed to the joyful crowd gathering around the happy occasion of a new birth. Welcome everyone into this Great Wakening and Waiting.

CALL TO WORSHIP: ADVENT WREATH LITANY

ASSURANCE OF GOD’S GRACE

Hear these words from the Apostle Paul: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”

May the love of God the Creator, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit sanctify you and equip you with the armor of light, so that you can be a light and hope for many who come to you. Amen.

CHILDREN’S TIME

Good morning, my friends! Advent blessings to you!

By the way, what time is it…?

(Anxiously ask as if I really need to know what time it is now. Checking my pockets, my wrist to see where I put my watch…)

Do we have anyone who can tell me what time it is now?

(Props: put a watch, a clock, a calendar around the nativity set.)

Okay,  got it!

So the time is 11 AM on December the first, 2013... Which is the first Advent Sunday... Which is the time of WAITING…for…???

(Receive answers. If the children can’t answer immediately...)

During Advent, what do we wait for …?  (Receive answers..If no answers, ask WHO do we wait for?)

Yes! We are waiting for THE CHRIST CHILD. BABY JESUS. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD to come to us.

You know, since I was a child, I have been wondering, “Hmm.… what is so special about the fact that Christ came to us as a BABY?”

What does it mean that Jesus, who has come to the earth like any other baby, is the LIGHT of the world?

(Prop; a ball that lights.)

THIS SEASON OF ADVENT is a time to prepare ourselves for welcoming Jesus into our hearts, as if we welcome a new baby brother or sister into our family with love and prayer.

WILL YOU PRAY WITH ME?

Dear God, let us prepare our hearts as loving homes for the coming Christ Child. Amen.

OFFERING PRAYER                                                                               

God is about to send a message of hope to the world.

May our offering today be a message of hope for all. Amen.

COMMUNION

Dear friends in Christ, it is our great joy that we are welcomed to the feast of bread and juice – an ordinary meal, less substantial than our breakfast, ordinary food that is made with mere grains and grapes, ordinary - yet sanctified to be holy for the love we receive as we share in this feast.

As an invitation for today’s communion, I would like to share a story from the Philippines.

Ed de la Torre was writing about developing a “Eucharist of rice” in the Philippines, using the rice cakes called bibingka and native palm wine as the agents of communion. Preaching about the breaking of the host to desperately hungry peasant farmers, de la Torre explained simply, “We BREAK it because we are poor, and we don’t have enough. We must share the little we have.” Later, from jail, on a hunger strike, de la Torre wrote a poem and smuggled it out to his church. “To starve after justice,” it began, “to ache for it, like food.”

At this table we starve after hope, justice, peace, love. We ache for them, like food. So we gather around this table. For those who know their need, God is immediate – not an idea, not a theory, but life and food.

L: May God be with you.

P: And also with you.

L: We open our hearts.

P: We open our hearts to God.

L: Let us give thanks to God.

P: It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Creator of the Universe, you speak in the darkness, bringing song out of silence, dance out of stillness, life out of death.

Your life fills us now and gives us the power to praise you and bless you.

So we sing a song of great thanks and praise with the company of saints here and all around the world, of men and women and children, in ages past and in the present, as one body, God’s body, in endless diversity.

MV 203

Beholding your holiness in all our human lives, we praise you and bless you.

On the night before his friends betrayed him

and enemies took him away to be killed,

Jesus shared supper with them all.

He blessed bread, broke it, gave it to them and said,

“This bread is my body,

making covenant with you and all humankind.

Whenever you eat it, remember me.”

Then he blessed the cup and said,

“This is the cup of life, my blood poured out for all,

making covenant with you and all humankind.

Whenever you drink it, remember me.”

Now whenever we eat this bread and juice,  

Jesus rises in us and makes us one body.

REMEMBERING THE COMMUNITY

After all, we can’t be a Christian by oneself.

God, on this table of the great sharing of your love,

Where bread is broken and juice is poured out,

We remember those who suffer and are in need of the nourishment of healing, in need of encouragement and the hope of a new life;

We pray for those who are hungry, sick and afraid, those who are in prison and without homes, enemies and friends, the violent and those who suffer at other’s hands.

We pray for those who are lonely, scared of the uncertain future, depressed or hopeless, and those who mourn for the loss of a loved one. Sustain and strengthen their hearts with your love, consolation and faithful presence.

Especially we pray for the bereaved in our church family who still hurt from the death of someone they have loved, and for all those who are currently going through a life-changing moment. Let us never spring back to who we WERE, but transform – “metamorphose” into a new way of being we may have never imagined for ourselves but YOU have imagined for us.  

LORD’S PRAYER

Life-giving God,  

you raised Jesus in glory from the tomb.

Now show us his body alive in your children.

Open our hearts to your Spirit, enlivening us.

Heal us, inspire us and give us your power

so we may live as Jesus lives and love as Jesus loves.

“Holy Gifts for Holy People.”

DISTRIBUTION

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

God, when the world is just too much, when our life bogs down in mess and challenges, we break, and try not to see you, because it is too painful to believe that you are with us in the darkness. Yet, in the process of breaking, you never let us be the same, unchanged. We TRANSFORM within the shelter of your being, readied for the future that is only known to you. May this food we have eaten sustain us into the future that only hope and trust in you will bring to fruition, with your sustaining love. Amen.

Note (2) from Leading Adaptive Change Workshop - including personal case study

USE OF POWER
Authority Zone – meeting expectations

Leadership Zone – working on competing values

Power Zone – abuse of position

What congregation teaches you “you don’t really understand what our congregation …makes music leader choose more comfortable music…

How music is fitting into the our worship right now

Stepping out and boldly more in …

If you don’t abuse power – leadership is always about…

People’s expectation on leadership – directing, protecting, ordering (technical problem solving)

Leader should be able to expose threats

Adaptive leadership and technical -> don’t always mix

Difficulty providing adaptive leadership

Adaptive work often ….outside of authority structures

Work Avoidance

Work avoidance is what we do in place of adaptive work

Diverting attention / displacing responsibility

Blaming/scapegoating – technical solving only – telling a joke, take a break, deny the problem, create a proxy fight, take options off the table to honour legacy behaviour

Displacing Responsibility

Shooting the messenger, scapegoating someone, externalize the enemy, attacking authority, delegate the work to someone who can’t do anything about it (consultant committee, task force)

The leader’s task is getting the work back to the people who have to do the adaptation

It is not managing change: It is about regulating the pace of loss.

Frustrating expectations at a rate that people can stand.

10-12 % people will never change because their core value is being threatened.

Always asking: who stands to lose what? (what’s being left behind)

CONTAINERS

Dialolgue inside the governing body

(experiment: (lava) and see how the congregation respond to it)  ex. At the end of the summer

Finding the PRODUCTIVE ZONE OF DISEQUILIBIRUM

(3 pictures of the pots of boiling egg in the water)

Until the heat warms up to a certain level

The second picture: system shutdown

9. Holding Steady.

THE DANCE FLOOR – OBSERVE, INTERPTRETE, INTERVENE
What’s happening in the balcony – create a space for observing balcony

YOU KNOW WHEN ALL ADAPTIVE CHALLENGE WHEN  p.10

-          There is persistent gap between aspiration and reality

-          Available responses are inadequate

-          Difficult learning is required

-          New stakeholders need to be included

-          Long true frame needs to be changed

IDENTIFYING FLAGS OF ADAPTIVE CHALLENGE
the language of complaint is overused..

Failure, frustration, stress

p. 11.

LEARNING AN ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION

Involves testing hypothesis – ex “we don’t have children in our worship, it means..”

Example of adaptive intervention: adaptive challenge: A congregation in pastoral transition: what does it mean to prepare our congregation for new leadership after a highly successful and visible pastorate of 18 years.

The intervention; people become to ask all the sacred cows. Anxiety level is heightened.

Conversation, container

Leaders want to reduce board size from 21 members to 9 members to improve board decision making effectiveness.

YOUR DECISION TO BE NON-REACTIVE can be ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION

최대한 예배를 구성하는 힘(power)가 더 많은 사람들에게 주어지도록 한다

FRACTION IS NOT SIGN OF FAILRUE; IT IS A SIGN OF MOVEMENT
We treat that as DATA

Stakeholders begin to use our perspectives

Be careful not to carry somebody else’s water

DIFUSSION OF INNOTVATION (Everett Rodgers)

Innovators 2.5 % likes changes for the sake for changes

Early Adaptors 13.5 % if when some makes sense to them

Early Majority: 34 %
Late Majority: 34 % head back for a while – skeptical people

Laggards 16 % Laggards are never coming along, never going to endorse to change, no explanation would get them to move along

Target for change – not for the sake of laggards, but for late majority

Usually we spend most of our energy mostly to the three groups – innovators, early adaptors, laggards, but the place for you to put your leadership and energy are Early Majority and Late Majority.

Say to the Laggards: “I am so sorry that it’s so painful for you, but we are going this way.”

ACTING POLITICALLY (Matthew 10:16)

In ways of getting things done in MISSIONAL AND COVENANTAL WAY

Through the strategic use of power

Am I deepening my influence reservoir or draining it?

Ø  Our ambivalence about power

Ø  Concerns about means and end

Ø  Preference for individual over collective performance

Ø  Preference for decision making over implementation

Fair Fighter (FF) Dirty Fighter (DF) Balanced Fighter (BF)

Q. What is an appropriate response to those who try to sabotage you?

Be aware: the use of negative currency will always escalate the power dynamics.

Engage the HEALTHY BYSTANDERS, POWER OF THE COMMUNITY

EXAMINE YOUR IMMUNITY TO CHANGE
(Now away from the congregation system to YOUR LEADERSHIP SYSTEM

ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION FOR MYSELF

Book: Immunity to Change

COLUMN 1 : POSSIBILITIES

What things (if I could do them more frequently or better) would help me to be a more adaptive leader in my context (for example, not worry about pleasing everyone, ignoring things that I don’t really need to pay attention to…)?

Ø  My personal answer:

I need to develop leadership skill that is political in a healthy and appropriate way and influential enough to bring adaptive changes that church does need to go through as an outcome of the adaptive leadership.

1. Developing healthy, political leadership skills that would practically bring as an outcome healthy changes that the community need to experience. (developing healthy skills of using coalition tactics as one of my influence tactics)

2. Self-confidence and endurance to not stop promoting an adaptive change in the face of others’ resistance and exercising an inappropriate attempt.

3. Being firm and standing on my ground when I articulate on the adaptive challenges, without falling into becoming emotional. Not becoming a victim.

COLUMN 2 : LOYALTIES AND VALUES

What loyalties or values underlie your column 1 responses for each response in column 1, complete this sentence. “This response suggests that I am loyal to”

Ø  I am loyal to health of community, being ‘missional’ as a core value of my identity as a Christian and the church’s.

Ø  I am loyal to the commitment and desire to develop need skills and exercise leadership that is politically healthy and practically influential (political influence).  

Ø  Independence, influence, confidence, endurance, health of the community, being missional, practicality, standing on my ground.

COLUMNE 3: DOING/NOT DOING

Look at what you recorded in column 2 and answer this question: “What am I doing or not doing that is keeping me from more fully honouring these ‘commitments’”?

Ø  I have been too conscious of and sensitive to whether the time is favourable or not to speak the truth and do the needed action that would actually make any influence on the dynamics of the congregation.

Ø  I have hesitated to do anything that may make fraction among others.

Ø  I stop doing any effort to make changes when I face strong resistance from a group of people. I don’t usually confront others.

Ø  I have never used coalition tactics as a possible influence tactics that I may benefit from using it.  (making allies..with healthy bystanders).

Ø  I have never considered to be political. (being political is opposed to being faithful.)

COLUMN 4: HIDDEN COMPLETING COMMITMENTS

WORRY BOX: If I imagine myself doing the opposite of what I recorded in column 3, what is the most uncomfortable, worrisome or outright scary feeling that comes up for me?

Ø  Creating conflict, fraction, a certain dynamic that I may contribute to and then I will have no control over.

Ø  After all, if I don’t accept the wishes of those who would never comply to me, they would eventually leave the church for their own deeply saturated frustration and resentment.

Ø  I am worried that the others begin to convince their friends to believe that I am not competent, and that I lack important capacities, skills, faith and knowledge that they believe are the cores of leadership (including worship leadership). (Put it differently, proving my competence and excellency so that I prove I am valuable is so important to me.)

Ø  If I act politically, I may lose fairness and inclusivity. Being political means losing fairness.

THE WORRY BENEATH THE WORRY

Ø  I am valuable only when I prove that I am competent and excellent.

Ø  People may leave if I don’t comply to their wishes, and that means I fail in ministry. I will be considered as an incompetent, bad minister.

For each behaviour you listed in column 3, identify the commitment driving that behaviour by completing this sentence: “I may also be loyal to…”

Ø  The values of fairness, inclusivity, others’ feelings and desire to feel happy and good, caring and being faithful to everyone, especially those who are not well,

Ø   proving my competence, excellence, people’s evaluation

Ø  Staying away from what stresses me, inner peace.

Ø  Harmony. Liking each other.

Ø  You cannot possibly satisfy those two different sets of commitments. I cannot live in the both worlds at the same time.

Ø  Column 2 protects Column 3 from worries, so we get stuck

COLUMN 5: BIG ASSUMPTIONS

A mindset or way of constructing reality that inevitably contains a blind spot: something we don’t initially recognize as an assumption but as the truth.

Ø  I have not believed that my proving of my capacity and competence can be measured by how I have made healthy fraction and whether people begin to adopt the vocabularies from my vision, - the signs of the adaptive changes – rather than by the numbers of the church attendance or seeing who have come and who may never come back to Sunday service.

Ø  That if I don’t comply, people would leave is an assumption that I have never tested.

Ø  I have assumed that coalition tactic is always not healthy and leads to lose fairness.

COLUMN 6: FIRST SMART TEST

What are one or two concrete and tangible action step that you could take to test your most problematic assumptions? Safe enough to test the assumption that I hold as truth

Ø  Acting politically; whenever and whatever Helen and others use inappropriate attempts, I say no. And assure them that we can have a conversation in a container setting that is appropriate, healthy, public, official and visible.

Ø  Engage with the healthy bystanders like Gloria, David, Lana and others and ask or receive their spontaneous support. Use Coalition tactics, make allies, work with bystanders. Share.

Ø  Don’t use ‘legitimate tactic’ to Helen, Marian and others as it seems that it does not work at all.

Ø  Speak the truth and act politically with appropriate, healthy means.

Ø  Try and to be in a way that deepens my influence reservoir. Always be reminded.

Ø  Try to be disengaged as much as I can from Helen. (Don’t put too much energy to persuade and work with Helen.) Try to be more engaged with the group of Early Adopters and Late Adopters and share my vision with them.