PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
 
Editor's note: In 2017, United Methodist Bishop Hope Morgan Ward wrote about her region's experience of devastating hurricanes in light of the hope of Advent. We offer her reflections again a year later mindful of the many places in the United States and around the world that have experienced catastrophic storms of their own -- both real and metaphorical -- in 2018. 

God has described a circle on the face of the waters, at the boundary between light and darkness. -- Job 26:10 (NRSV)

A little more than a year ago, on Oct. 8, 2016, darkness and floodwaters overwhelmed 5,000 households in Robeson Country, North Carolina, and many thousands more across the southeastern United States. After inflicting catastrophic damage in Haiti as a strong Category 4 storm, Hurricane Matthew fell upon us, wreaking havoc, shattering order, breaking hearts, creating chaos.

That is what disasters do.

When overshadowed by disaster, we pray, we engage, we give, we work together to restore.

That is what we do. And as we do these things, we embody the petition in Psalm 80:7, the appointed lesson for the first Sunday in Advent:

Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Gary Locklear of Pembroke, North Carolina, remembers Oct. 8 in his beloved community. He remained in the damp darkness for three days. Then resolution welled up: it was time to go out into the ravaged community around his home. A church and community worker and a home missioner for the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, he has been a consistent, leading voice in recovery efforts from that moment. In his life and leadership, we see the psalm prayed, lived, fulfilled.

 
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: ADVENT WAITING
Advent watchfulness is a call to participate in the in-breaking of the Kingdom
We must transform the workplace, the home and the play place into spaces that care for the vulnerable, for Christ himself, writes the director of the Thriving in Ministry Coordination Program. 
 
Never mind the width 
In Advent, dare to feel the depth. Never mind the width. If you're tired of waiting, go deeper, says the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. 
 
Impatiently waiting
The search for a church committed to racial reconciliation didn't go quickly. But the waiting for it, like the waiting of Advent, was a time to learn to love God and neighbor and find miracles in small and surprising places, says the national director of Intervarsity Black Campus Ministries. 
 
 
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

The church year is often seen as a framework for church programs, but well-known Alban author Charles Olsen shows readers how it can be a prism through which congregations more deeply understand their own stories.

By weaving together our narratives and those of Christian tradition, a congregation can clarify its identity, grow in wisdom, and discover a new vision and ministry. Olsen draws parallels between the church seasons and practices of spiritual formation -- letting go, naming and celebrating God's presence, and taking hold. He shows us how these movements are expressed in the three major cycles of the church year -- Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. 

Focusing on communal narratives, he presents a process for telling a story and forming a corporate memory of the story, and then deepening and reflecting on it by exploring the season of the church year that captures its character.

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