 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | | PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS |
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Jennifer struggles to find hope for a new life and a home for herself and her two children after her release from prison. Carl learns to communicate and experience love after his life in a gang. Theo learns to feel joy and connect with other former gang members. Christina discovers a peace that allows her to stay sober and be present with her daughter. These are the stories that form the core of the Rev. Justin Coleman's new Advent study, "Home for Christmas: Tales of Hope & Second Chances." Each of the four chapters features the story of a person involved in Homeboy Industries, a ministry that helps former gang members. Following the themes of hope, love, joy and peace, the study combines Scripture and a meditation on the hymn "O Holy Night." The four-week "Home for Christmas" resource includes a book, a DVD and leader guides for youth and adults. "Hopefully, [these] stories will bring us closer to the story of Christ in the midst of this Advent season," Coleman said. Readers will find "a mix of Bible study and narrative theology that begins to emerge through story." Coleman, who is the senior pastor of University United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, drew inspiration from the Rev. Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Coleman is a graduate of Southern Methodist University and Duke Divinity School. Before taking his current position, he served as the chief ministry officer for the United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, Tennessee, and as lead pastor of the Gethsemane Campus of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Houston, where he helped create Houston reVision, a ministry for under-resourced and gang-affected youth in that city. |
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| | IDEAS THAT IMPACT: ADVENT PREPARATION |
Shopping should be the last thing on the Christmas to-do list. Instead, our Sunday readings stress repentance. That means 'tis the season to feed the hungry, be satisfied with what you have and live with the end in mind. |
In our world of instant delivery and fast passes, the counter-cultural season of Advent offers no shortcuts. Instead, we must walk slowly alongside the expectant couple, beholding the ordinary and tuning our hearts to the Holy Spirit, writes a Presbyterian pastor. |
The cult of consumption requires more than the occasional Advent sermon cautioning against "losing the real meaning of the season." What if Advent became a season of baptismal renewal? |
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Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry invites pastors to embody their deepest beliefs in the routine and surprising tasks of ministry. Inspired by Brother Lawrence's classic text in spirituality, this book integrates the wisdom and practices of the Christian spiritual tradition with the commonplace practices of pastoral ministry. Bruce and Katherine Epperly utilize a variety of spiritual disciplines especially Benedictine, Celtic, Ignatian, Rhineland, and process spiritualities to provide a framework for helping clergy nurture the awareness of God, creative imagination, and personal well-being in every aspect of their ministerial lives.
Practicing God's presence in the ordinary tasks of ministry inspires wholeness, spiritual transformation, vision, imagination, endurance, and healthy self-differentiation in ministry. Commitment to joining spiritual practices with the routine and repetitive tasks of ministry provides an important antidote to unhealthy stress, burnout, and loss of vision in ministry. By seeing their congregational leadership in terms of spiritual transformation, imaginative practice, and relational interdependence, ordinary ministerial practices can become ways pastors can deepen their relationship with God. Growing out of their work with pastors at every season of ministry, as well as combined ministerial experience of nearly sixty years, Bruce and Katherine Epperly invite pastoral leaders to complement and expand on their understanding of spiritual leadership, pastoral excellence, and self-care, integrating traditional and contemporary spiritual practices with the concrete arts of ministry.
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