Church News

 

From Our Senior Minister

02/10/2010

This past weekend was a perfect example of the power of church community sharing face-time moments.

TGIF! (No, I’m not giving thanks to the Deity for my day off –which IS Friday) 

Instead, I’m mulling over a new meaning for this acronym which United Methodist preacher and Professor Leonard Sweet offered in a recent     sermon that came across my computer screen.  

Sweet writes that TGIF in our day and age could mean our Twitter/Google/Internet/Facebook  society.   

Probably the most prolific of the sites (right now) is Facebook, which allows people that we’ve known from all seasons of our lives to be           connected, to be our “friends” once again.  Our Contact List melds all our communities, past and present, into one.  It is amazing and fun, and it satisfies the question, “I wonder what ever happened to….”   

Dr. Sweet challenges:  “Let me put it another way:  the more Facebook, the more [we need] face-to-face, in-your-face. The more we depend on cyberspace face-offs and virtual face-lifts, the more real “in your face” time we need to make in our lives.   

“Making ‘face-time’ with friends, family,colleagues, neighbors, takes away the electronic filters that hide us or protect us.  It is face-time that makes us vulnerable, that makes us real, that makes us human.” 

I totally agree with Sweet’s call for face-time. There is STILL something very powerful in the way heart-to-heart interactions take place when people come together face-to-face.  There is still something very powerful that    happens when we commit to spending time, sharing ideas, and  working side by side with each other. 

This past weekend was a perfect example of the power of church community sharing face-time moments.

 

The first was with the Home Blessing of Benny Mitchell.  Two of the small groups in the church to which he is connected (the Wed. Bible Study group and the NOW Sunday School class) celebrated with him in his brand-spanking new house.   

Now, to be “in-your-face” honest, Benny lives in a part of town that very few of us Anglos ever visit.  It’s in a neighborhood that many from one side of the tracks are even afraid to drive through. 

And yet, on Saturday, we paid Benny a social call, sharing his joy in his new home, offering up our prayers that he will continue to be blessed. 

When it was all over, Benny said his neighbors came up and asked him what all the commotion was about.  They remarked they always saw Benny going to church, but they had never seen church come to anyone like what happened with Benny on Saturday.

The neighbors saw our faces.  We saw theirs.  And something shifted a little in our world on Saturday.  A wall fell; a barrier broke; we saw a little glimpse of the realm of God out of the  corner of our eye.  Perhaps we even saw Jesus face-to-face.   

All because we took time to share face-time with each other.

 

 

The other face-time moment was with our General Minister and President, Sharon Watkins, this past Sunday morning.  Her sermon helped us see Jesus in a new and healing way.  Her presence connected us with Disciples around the country, and people of faith around the world. 

Sharon now knows the “face” of East Dallas Christian Church, and we know hers.  And because of that, a relationship is strengthened, a mission renewed. 

As we prepare for the weekend ahead, we’re given another opportunity to create more “face-time.”  This Sunday is Valentine’s Day, and I hope you will come share your love with the God who created you, and loves you so. 

And then, we will turn our faces toward the cross as we move into Lent, witnessing face to face the Greatest Love ever shown for us.  Glad to see your faces!