I’m happy to report that the North Suburban Mennonite Church in Libertyville, Illinois, has asked me to speak on Sunday, July 14th, during their service.
One of their members (and a good friend), Linda Wiens, had joined our second gathering earlier this year. After hearing me share some thoughts and insights there, she encouraged her congregation to invite me. This is the first time I’ll speak to a whole church. I’m looking forward to it.
And, well, “speak” is actually not the right word.
One of my observations about the typical worship service I’ve experienced is that the sermon and other elements can make people too passive. So I plan to break up my presentation into three parts. After each part, I will ask a question of the congregation and have a dialog with them around that question. My hope is that these dialog segments cause them to engage with my thoughts more actively in their hearts and minds.
I’m calling my presentation “Your Life of Faith and God’s Earth.” You will not be surprised to know that my core message is that a Christian’s life of faith is not whole if it doesn’t include God’s earth.
And by include I mean several things. God’s earth should be part of our core idea of what the story the Bible communicates with us. God’s earth and even God’s universe are part of what Jesus redeems. The ultimate future God will include a renewed earth. God’s earth communicates vital things to us about God. Our lives of faith (and faith is not faith if it is not lived!) must include God’s earth. And, in fact, our lives of faith are enriched and deepened by being attentive to God’s earth and by being good shepherds of it.
In short, we cannot say we love God and love our neighbors if we deplete, diminish, and trash God’s earth.
And the corollary to that is this – being a good shepherd of Creation as part of our individual and community lives contributes to the abundant life Jesus offers us.
As I work through the content of what I share, I’m wrestling with several challenges. One is that there is so much I want to share. The last five years or so have opened my eyes to an incredible variety of topics, connections, and insights. But one of the golden rules of effective speaking is to not overwhelm. Presentations, like our lives, often benefit from subtraction, not addition. So I will be working hard to share just the essentials.
The other challenge is the question of how the members of North Suburban Mennonite Church (and, by extension, any church and any Christian) should live out a whole faith that includes God’s earth.
On one hand, overwhelming peope with long to-do lists can be entirely unproducive. Conversely, it’s far too easy to give answers that are facile and shallow.
How do we navigate that tension?
Above all, I’m grateful for the opportunity to figure that out and to get feedback from a congregation I know is civic-minded and big-hearted.
If you’re in the area and would like to attend, it would be great to have you. The North Suburban Mennonite Church holds servcies at the Civic Center in downtown Libertyville, which is located at 135 W. Church St. They hold fellowship at 10 a.m. and the service begins at 10:30 a.m. Please let me know if you are coming. I’d certainly appreciate the support.
P.S. Speaking at this church is a homecoming of sorts. My family and I attended the congregation for about a year earlier in our lives. Learning about Mennonite history and theology and experiencing their close community expanded my ideas of what Christianity can and should be. I pray my message will be of value to them.
