Thoughts along the way.

A week at Family Camp in Montana, here are some highlights: Bucket showers; sleeping in a tipi; great food (we had steak and corn on the cob one night); good conversations; new friends; learning the history of Mennonites and Cheyenne Mennonites (the church in Busby has recently celebrated their 100th year anniversary); the big night sky and the warmth of shared blankets.

As I was attempting to pick something to write about as a reflection of our time I realized that there is no way to do it! There are too many things that are still churning in my head to put into coherent words. So I will reflect on the content of our presentations.

One of the great things about being speakers at Family Camp is that we had the opportunity to present a series, to build on each other in our interest areas and to build relationships along the way. This takes me back to our original idea for this summer, as Matt and I worked on the initial proposal together we hoped to spend more time with a congregation than just a Sunday morning. We wanted to learn from individuals and congregations who they are, and what they are doing in their context to bring God's vision of Shalom to reality. We hoped to provide a series of workshops that would build on each other as happened at Family Camp. This takes more than Sunday morning.

As I look at our schedule and what is to come I see that many of our church encounters are limited to a Sunday morning worship. This is great, I'm glad to be able to participate and to lead Sunday morning worship, but there is more to God's vision and thinking about peace as a way of living than can be portrayed from the pulpit. I know I don't give as much time as I could to participating in church activities that happen outside of Sunday morning, but this seems to be a general trend. Church, faith, God! is only allowed a 2-3 hour chunk of time on a Sunday morning. We let sports, schools, drama, TV, work and other humdrum activities dominate our time. Rather than communing with God and communing with others in Christ we exhaust ourselves in too many other activities.

Hmm.. Maybe that is why it is easier to take Jesus' message of Salvation as being the only message that Jesus brought, because if we started to take seriously Jesus' teachings we would have to change our life styles. We would have to give of ourselves in ways we wouldn't want to. We would have to experience the cost of discipleship.

Elizabeth