A Two Goal Lead is the Most Dangerous Lead...

I went to see the new movie 2012 this week. The movie, about the end of the world as the Mayan calendars predicted, seemed appropriate for our particular world ending scripture readings that we have today. I went to see it so I could have some great tidbit of wisdom for you all about end times. I came away from that movie only wanting to talk about Care Bears and Cabbage Patch Dolls. Seriously, its hardcore. I am turning into a big wimp when it comes to movies these days. The end of the movie has stuck with me because it expresses a dream I have for our Church. A dream for Gethsemane, for the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, and the United Sates, for the Anglican Communion and for Christendom as a whole. In the movie the world is changed, it took freak alignment of the planets, and extra strong bursts of fire from the sun, but the world was changed. At the end of the movie one of the kids asks if they can go home, which of course they can’t because some place in Wisconsin has bec...

VOTE HERE VOTE HERE VOTE HERE

The Rev. Aron Kramer 5 Easter Sunday May 10, 2009 The Church has become a place to go, not a people to be. This was said by Phyllis Tickle last Wednesday night at Breck school. Many of you heard her say it and I hope it struck home as much with you as it did with me. This is the tension we are being called to live into at this point in our lives together. We have become a place to go, not a people to be. And yet we are making a decision together on how we will be a people called and sent by God, to participate in the work God is already doing in the world. I would be lying to you if I said that I was overjoyed we voted to remain in the building. What seemed to be the easiest task of the three truly is the hardest. Closing the building was the easiest of all of them, and we resoundingly chose not to take the easy path. Leaving the building would have also been difficult, but oddly enough, not as difficult as staying in this space. The decision we have made toget...

For the past three years The Garden has been one of a handful of parishes who have taken the work of the BCMS and incorporated into the very fabric of our being, into the very culture of who we are as a congregation. We have allowed its wisdom to guide our decision making processes as we journey to a new future together. Gethsemane was the catalyst for this entire mission discernment process, out of the work around the Gethsemane plan, the BCMS and MSN processes emerged and came into being. For every minute of our renewal experience and around every decision we have made in the Garden (how we affectionately refer to ourselves, no one seems to know how to say Gethsemane) we have held close to our heart and soul the work of the original BCMS plan. It is important work that challenges us at a level that goes beyond the perceived diocesan structural challenges we face. Three years ago Gethsemane was in an uncertain place, a place not unlike where the Diocese finds itself today. As part...