Thursday, March 28, 2013

Communion Bread Recipe

Candler Communion Bread Recipe (for those of us who have gone to two stores looking for pita bread and can't find any)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

In a bowl mix:

4 cups of whole wheat flour
4 tsp. of DOUBLE ACTING baking powder (or 8 tsp. of single acting baking powder)
2 tsp. of salt

Make sure ingredients are thoroughly mixed because it will affect the taste of the bread.

In a separate container mix thoroughly (I put them in a container with a lid and shake)

3/4 cup water
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup honey
3/4 cup vegetable oil

Gradually add the wet mix to the mixed dry ingredients mixing them together with your hands (this will be very, very sticky). You're shooting for a ball of dough that's cohesive, but not too sticky; this may mean that you don't add all the wet ingredients or if your dough is just a sticky mess add a bit of flour. Knead the dough once you have a ball. Once you've kneaded, roll or pat the dough out and cut it into 6 inch rounds (I use a six inch bowl to cut them out). The recipe suggests the dough be about a 1/2 inch thick; you can make it thinner if you can do it without tearing; they will rise in the oven.


Place them on an ungreased cookie or pizza sheet (I use Teflon pie tins)
Then use a knife to cut a cross into each of them (don't go all the way through the dough!)
They will bake in 10-15 minutes, however they may need just a bit longer or shorter depending on your oven. 
They are finished when they no longer seem doughy. You don't want them super dark (burned) on the bottom.
This recipe makes 6-8 rounds 8 is usually plenty for the service.

Recipe from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit
Modified, Steve Reneau

Monday, March 25, 2013

Maundy Thursday with readings from John


Full script with Director's notes here.


Invocation
John 1:1-18
“Once upon a Tree” by Pepper Chopin -- Choir

John 12:1-4
“My Jesus I Love Thee” UMH 172 – Ist verse woman’s solo joined by choir rest of verses and congregation

John 12:4-8
Luke 22:7-14
“What Wonderous Love is This” UMH 292

John 13:2-17
Invitation to Footwashing
“Jesu, Jesu” UMH 432
“O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee” UMH 430

John 13:21-35
“Gift of love” UMH 408
Luke 22:15-20

Words of Invitation to Table and Consecration
Solo- “Remember Me” by Mark Schultz
“Be Thou My Vision” UMH 451

Matthew 26:30-44
Solo – “Into the Woods” lyrics by Sidney Lanier
Words of Dismissal
“A Wind Blew Over Calvary” by Greg Sewell – Choir

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Reflections about Snakes and Evangelism


Yesterday my husband Bill and I entertained a local traveling evangelist from another (unnamed) denomination who came knocking on our door. Rather, Bill entertained and I sat and listened in the other room. I usually invite all who knock on my door into the house for a cup of coffee and conversation but I was in the midst of paperwork and that kind of stuff.  I usually invite them in because serves two purposes – it allows me to witness to my faith and it allows me listen to listen to as they witness to their faith.  I’m pretty non-discriminatory – I invite them all in: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormon Missionaries, Baptists, non-denominational. Whatever they are, all are welcome.  It boosts me up to be able to talk to people about Jesus regardless of the circumstances.
Of course I know that not everybody feels this way.  Most of us consider these people to be annoying, even unwelcome.  After Bill had closed the door on our latest visitor he said, “I think next time I’ll get a snake.”
It’s an inside joke - he’s referring to an incident that occurred early in our marriage when I still worked at Fernbank Science Center.  I babysat two different snakes over two different summers.  The snakes had a definite purpose in life – we used them as teaching tools to show kids the difference between venomous snakes and non-venomous snakes.  Buzz was a Florida King Snake, mostly yellow with black stripes.  I kept him quite a while but my favorite was Scarlet who was a Georgia Corn Snake.  These snakes were not very docile and had to be handled everyday so that they wouldn’t forget to be “nice.” 
One summer afternoon, I had Scarlet up my sleeve and she had gone to sleep curled up around my elbow.  When the local traveling evangelist knocked on my door and I answered, Scarlet woke up and traveled down my sleeve to my hand.  I held out my hand to shake my visitor’s hand and …. the snake poked her head out of my sleeve and started to go toward my visitor.  She gave a shriek and left rapidly.  To be fair to her, most of the time corn snakes get killed because they are mistaken to be copperheads.  I’m sure she thought I was handling copper heads.  Nonetheless, that was the last time they came visiting while we lived in that house.
So when Bill said, “I think next time I’ll get a snake,” he was really meaning, “I don’t want them to come back.”  Yet I do.  I enjoy it and encourage it.  I find it a boost to my faith to hear their stories.  And I pray for them and with them, that their journeys from house to house might be fruitful and that God use them to increase the Kingdom.
I think evangelism is the number one place Methodists fail. We are really good with the fellowship components of Christian community. We excel at Christian Education and Formation.  We are superlative at Acts of Social Justice, be they right or just well intentioned.  But we are not adding to the Kingdom.
Old methods and models of evangelism are just that – old. Some of them have worked and some are just well intentioned.  I was trained in the late 1970’s (as a very very young child, I will have you know) in a method called Evangelism Explosion.  I either was not very good at it, or perhaps the methods had seen their day because I don’t think I ever really entered into a good, rich and deep conversation about faith with anyone I approached.
I think the oldest of the methods – Jesus’ method— might work the best.  If we look at how Jesus gathered people together we can start to see how we might gather them together.  He first approached them as people – individuals – and not “prospects.”  He made relationships with them.  He ate with them, He healed them.  He loved them.  He took care of their deepest need and then said, “Follow me.”
We need to approach individuals and see them as unique in God’s eyes, a beloved member of God’s great creation and realize that  each of them will come to Christ in their own way.  Let us seek out the un-churched, the least, the last and the lost and enter into relationship with them.  Invite them to dinner.  Eat with them.  Go to ballgames with them, shop with them, watch movies with them, get to know them and find out their deepest need.  Pray with them – and pray for them.  Love them as God would love them.  Ask them to church, share your faith with them and things will be transformed. 
And what’s amazing to me is that even if they never come to church – even if we never see the fruit from the seeds that we have planted, things will be transformed.  YOU will be transformed.  I will be transformed.  By echoing Jesus’ methods of evangelism, we will become more like Christ.  Our faith will become deeper, richer and more mature.  Our lives will be enriched, we will be transformed.
So it doesn’t require special training, y’all.  It doesn’t require extraordinary skill or special formulaic words.  And you don’t have to keep snakes.  Just a lot of love. 
 “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
            - 1 John 4:7-12 (NRSV)

Monday, March 04, 2013

There is a part of me that knows that life is a journey upon which we retrace roads over and over again. The road that I'm on right now is one I've been on before and I know that one day I'll retrace this bit of the journey again.  No thing of the road will be changed, but I will be changed.

That said, I think I've entered into a new bit of the territory that I've not been in in quite a while.  There are days that all I can say is, "I love Jesus."

I want to be quick to qualify that but, I won't so that the statement won't lose impact.  To qualify it would be to dismiss the visceral nature of that statement that "I love Jesus."

I love every single part of Jesus. I love the sheer beauty of this thing we call the "God's Plan of Salvation." I love the ebb and the flow of the story.  I love the person of Jesus who lived and breathed like me, who loved his mother, who loved his friends.  I love the teachings of Jesus.

I just love Jesus.