Starting this Advent, the Greater Northwest Area will begin a CrossOver year study together. Groups and individuals will work their way through short readings of Brian McLaren’s book We Make the Road by Walking over the 12 months that follow. This study will be complemented by short reflections and creative pieces offered regularly throughout the year, like this one republished with permission from Steve Garnass-Holmes.
As we consider the journey ahead in this CrossOver year, how will we bring Jesus with us? That is a question Garnass-Holmes’ piece begs of us. What else does it evoke in you?
Learn more about the study and subscribe to future posts.
They took him with them in the boat, just as he was.
— Mark 4.36
Not the holy, jewel-encrusted Jesus,
not the Son of God believe-it-or-else Jesus,
but the teacher from Galilee, plain, just as he is.
No emblems, no gesture, no crown.
No doctrine, no special powers.
Just his presence, his open heart, his willing flesh.
Let him go with you. Take him as he is.
He will change your journey (You will be frightened.)
Just get in the boat.
— June 21, 2018
People who love God and neighbor in the Greater Northwest,
If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and the healing.
I Corinthians 12: 26, The Message.
Tragic death. Terror. Devastating loss. Heroic rescue. Miraculous generosity. Recovery.
When we watch the news coverage of Hurricane Florence on the Atlantic coast of the United States and Typhoon Mangkhut ravaging the Philippines and Northern Mariana Islands, we feel the hurt, and we see what it takes for healing to begin. In every natural disaster lives unravel in ways that take months or years to put back together.
We have neighbors in North Carolina and in the Philippines, who need our love to put their lives back together. And we have United Methodist partners who can carry our love to heal what was broken in these storms.
On Sunday, September 23 or 30, please give what you can to put your love to work by giving to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). You can give through your local church by marking a donation to the U.S. Disaster Response fund (#901670) or the International Disaster Response Fund (#982450). 100% of your gift will be used for response work relief with no administrative overhead.
Or you can give online at www.umcor.org/donate. You can include your church name when you give so it will be recognized.
And as you give, pray for the people whose lives are disrupted and for those who are responding. Also say thanks for the United Methodist connections that give us confidence that our gifts are used wisely, for the purpose given, to benefit all God’s people.
Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky
Greater Northwest Area
This is your HEADS UP!
In a couple of weeks I’ll invite United Methodists and friends in the Greater Northwest Area to join a year-long devotional study beginning with Advent 2018. I hope many of you will form small groups to engage in this study together, but individuals can do it on their own. I hope that together we can renew our faith for the challenges we face in our lives, the Church, the nation and the world.
In We Make the Road by Walking, Brian McLaren introduces us afresh to the principles of Christian faith and bible teachings. Each week, in 3-4 pages, he invites us to revisit biblical principles and our lives of faith. We’ll create a blog to go alongside the study, with reflections and prayers by leaders of our Conferences, and a place for comments and conversation.
Some of you may already have your plans for Advent and beyond. If you can, I hope this Christian practice will fit into your other plans — especially since it will carry through this entire CrossOver Year. The CrossOver Year begins December 2, 2018 and ends November 24, 2019, with the special General Conference in February. I hope this notice is coming early enough that you can start encouraging participation now.
Watch for more information in the roll-out of the CrossOver Year — coming soon!
Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky | Greater NW Area
Look, I’m sending you as sheep among wolves.
Therefore, be wise as snakes and innocent as doves.
– Matthew 10:16
It’s hard to be a human these days.
The images. The stories of children being taken from their parents. They have been burned into our collective consciousness. I want to look away, but I can’t. Love doesn’t let me.
I want to do something, but I feel powerless. Does my voice matter? Has the church’s witness eroded so much that it makes very little difference? What are we left with? Only love.
The suffering of little children and their parents tugs on my heart and leads me to search for ways to put my love to work. Public policy isn’t all made in Washington D.C. or Salem, Olympia, Boise or Juneau. It is also made when the private love of many spills over into the collective compassion and outrage of a nation and its people. Public safety and national security are not only the responsibility of law enforcement and Homeland Security. They are also our responsibility when systems of authority and power fail. Infants taken from their parents is a matter of public safety.
Love has no magic to shake away depraved policy or fix cruel laws. But it is so very powerful. Love is our lifeline to humanity.
As your Bishop, I implore you to not look away. Love needs our help.
SEE the pain of those at the border, in tents in the desert, behind chain link, and huddled under space blankets. But don’t stop there. If you SEE something SAY something – on Facebook, to a friend or family member. Share what you see and how it looks to you. Ask yourself, WHAT CAN I DO TODAY? Don’t get trapped in believing it has to be something big or that your action needs a certain number of Likes or Re-Tweets to have meaning. Speak to neighbors. Talk about what you see. The collective actions of individuals have drawn attention to this crisis and changed public policy already.
Remember that God is with you. Act and speak (and text and Tweet) with confidence, knowing that love is never the wrong answer. Life is complicated and so are the many laws that define how we relate to each other. Be clear about what you know, but also be humble about what you don’t.
When I first heard that undocumented immigrants are held at a prison in my neighborhood, I was outraged – 174 women, some who have been separated from their children. I wanted to have my own private protest: make a sign, and go walk up and down the sidewalk. I wanted to write them all letters, saying I’m here, I know you are in there, I’m your neighbor and I care.
Earlier this week I attended a community meeting in my neighborhood, where 206 undocumented immigrants are housed in a Federal “Detention” Center 2 ½ miles from my home and from my office. Approximately 300 people turned out. We heard from high school students who live in terror of their parents being deporting leaving them to care for younger siblings. Of one mom arrested by ICE when she responded to a request for an interview, leaving her 3 children without a parent. We listened with love and pledged our love and support to stop family separations.
Last night on my way home from the grocery store, I drove to the SeaTac Detention Center. As I came near, I looked at the many levels of narrow windows rising into the blue sky and prayed for the people, whose faces I could not see through those windows. Then I turned into the parking lot, passing signs warning that anyone entering the property could be subject to search. I followed the signs for visitor parking, and drove past three large white buses, with U.S. Government license plates. Later on TV I saw similar buses transporting separated children to detention facilities in Texas.
Why did I go there? What difference did it make? I went to SEE the place where my neighbors are living. To IMAGINE their lives. To WONDER if there are separated children in that facility as well as adults. To ASK God what it means to love with my whole heart, soul, strength and mind?
And now I’m asking you to engage.
LOOK at the children. PRAY for all who flee violence in their homeland, desiring a better life. Look at the facilities where they are being held. If you are flying, NOTICE if there are unaccompanied minors traveling with escorts. LOCATE the nearest detention facility. Notice if buses are coming and going. FIND OUT who is organizing concerned people for public witness and policy advocacy. READ the attached resource from our Board of Church and Society. And WATCH for how to put love into action.
I don’t know what my next step is. I’ll talk with others who are already involved.
Finally, pace yourselves. While yesterday’s executive order may reverse the most egregious policies, it does not resolve the separations, or the crisis on the border, or the terror people across America live in.
We will need the love that never ends. We need to be committed for the long haul.
May we be the real, living presence of Christ in the world as we SEE, PRAY, READ, SPEAK and ACT.
Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky | Greater NW Area
In response to President Trump’s executive order, the general secretary calls on United Methodists for further action on immigration.
Because of persistent public pressure, President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday reversing the administration’s practice of forcibly separating children from their parents. I thank God for the faithful witness of thousands of United Methodists reflecting Christ’s love and compassion into this broken world.
This action does not, however, solve the problem.
While this executive order ends the practice of family separation, it continues what the administration calls a “zero tolerance” policy. This now means that families seeking refuge in the United States can be held together, in detention, indefinitely.
Our United Methodist Social Principles and Resolution #3281 are clear: we support policies that compassionately welcome immigrants and respect their human rights.
Policies that jail families — whether separately or together — fail to reflect our shared values of compassion, dignity, justice and love. Our options are not limited to jailing families together or jailing parents and children separately.
Alternatives to family detention, such as the Family Case Management Program, have been shown to be compassionate and effective. The administration terminated this program last year and instituted “zero tolerance” policies in its place this year.
We must continue the outpouring of compassion and action that ended the administration’s immoral and unjust practice of family separation. We must continue to work for a world in which:
The current state of our immigration policies is anything but compassionate and effective.
The U.S. House of Representatives is voting today on immigration legislation. Call your member at 202.224.3121 and make sure your voice is heard. You can share that The United Methodist Church calls for “the United States government to immediately cease all arrests, detainment, and deportations of undocumented immigrants, including children, solely based on their immigration status until a fair and comprehensive immigration reform is passed.“
Our Church calls us to welcome the migrant, and we must do that in our churches, communities and governmental systems.
Our witness cannot stop now.
How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life forevermore.
-Psalm 133:1, 3b
Today, the Council of Bishops strongly recommend that United Methodists stay together as ONE CHURCH.
Together, the council agreed to recommend that the 2019 General Conference make room for individuals, local churches and annual conferences to exercise conscience as they choose whether or not to ordain gay and lesbian clergy, or to perform weddings for couples of the same gender, by removing prohibitive language from the Book of Discipline, and letting Annual Conferences set standards for ordination, and same gender weddings.
This recommendation emerged out of honest anguish and disagreement, as well as patient listening and fervent prayer, as we met in closed session. We make this recommendation despite deep and painful differences in our understanding of God’s will for LGBTQ people and a recognition that the “contextual” teachings and practices of the church in one area not only makes ministry more difficult in other areas, but can cause real harm to people.
While forces around the world are sowing distrust and driving wedges to divide people against one another, we hope The United Methodist Church can be a witness to the whole world that people can live together in peace and love each other, despite profound disagreements, even as we continue to discern God’s will and way for the whole human family.
Living in hope,
Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky | Greater NW Area
To United Methodists in the Greater Northwest and all who read these words, wherever you are:
Between last week’s HOSANNA! and Easter’s ALLELUIA! we watch as Jesus walks to his death at the hands of secular and religious authorities, but emerges on the other side, victorious by the power of love at work in the world.
If we haven’t already cast the story with bunnies, daffodils and butterflies, we will recognize this story wherever hope breaks forth from despair. In the crowds of young people in the streets of America, marching, pleading, promising to claim their chance to live without the fear of being stalked and killed at school or at home, or in the neighborhood.
We will recognize the story among immigrants, who have left everything behind, travelled at great peril across deserts, war zones, oceans, boundaries, to arrive in foreign, often hostile lands in hopes of living in freedom, security and opportunity.
We will recognize the story among the poor and homeless who live every day like birds or tiny fur friends in hidden corners, and under bushes, in alleys, behind abandoned walls, in defiance of the powers of death that hem them in before and behind.
We will recognize the Jesus story in our own lives every time we break free from habits of thought and practice that do not serve us well – routines, sorrows, low expectations, petty grievances that we give safe harbor, allowing them to dull our senses and lower our gaze.
We will recognize Jesus, alive and well every time we hear the unlikely – miraculous story, really – of someone walking out of the valley of the shadow of death into the dazzling light of a new day.
You see, the Jesus story isn’t about Jesus, really. His death and resurrection weren’t about him at all. They were about us. They were about God’s magnificent creation, coming out from behind a cloud. Jesus lived and loved and died and rose to open our hearts, our minds and the doors of our small lives to the way God’s love in and through us can make all things new. This is the body of Christ, broken for you. This is the cup of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many.
May new hope dawn in your life, in our nation, and on this precious, precarious planet. May a way open that you thought was closed. And may you discover unimagined blessing.
So shall we shout, Alleluia!
Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky | Greater NW Area