Guest Post: Reflections on Pray, Play, Partner - Sabbatical 2016

By Joby Dynneson, CtK Council President and Sabbatical Team member

Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise! Let the earth and all living things join in. Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the Lord. Psalm 98:7-9a (New Living Translation)

I have been asked, ”What gain do you get from mountain biking?” The answer is often tailored to the audience at hand. My answers will alternate between the health benefits, the thrill of mastering a tricky crux on the trail, and periods of quiet and solitude. Occasionally I will utter to someone what is often closest to the real truth: it is on the trail that I talk to God, it is a day in the woods that is my Sabbath.  The author of Psalm 98 expresses the feeling that I get out on the trail. The mountains, the deserts, and other wild places are where I am most able to hear the voice of the Lord. It is on the mountain tops and hill tops where I see the expanse of his majesty. I have found the most joyful church experience on Wednesdays, during WOW , singing a song,  looking out between those two trees, seeing beyond the stuff of humanity and taking in the awesomeness that is the Bridger Range; I appreciate the power of God.

This summer, we at CtK, will have many opportunities to commune with God, outside, together.  Each Wednesday we will be continuing with WOW (Worship on Wednesday) with food, fellowship, and worship. One Sunday at the end of July, July we will have a service of worship in Hyalite Canyon, at the pavilion beside the lake. Each month during the summer, everyone will be invited to join in outdoor activities and/or service projects. We will also have an exciting project happening, the building of an outdoor Labyrinth (prayer path) on the property, for the enjoyment and spiritual growth of the entire community.

The Sabbatical team and our pastors have come up with a theme for this summer’s sabbatical period: Pray, Play and Partner.  Please join us and the rest of the congregation as we grow together in faith and take in the beauty of God’s creation.  Stay tuned: the newsletter, website, and bulletins will have more information, dates, and locations.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. John Muir

Only Love

Thursday Thought

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

~ Martin Luther

Maundy Thursday Thought

It's always easier to follow Jesus in our heads than it is to follow him with our feet on the Via Dolorosa (way of suffering).
- Rev. Robert H. Herhold

Thursday Thought

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary; they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company, and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either. But he had "a daily beauty in his life that made us ugly," and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness.

~ Dorothy Sayers, A Matter of Eternity, Selections from the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers

Thursday Thought

The language that God hears best is the silent language of love.
~ John of the Cross, sixteenth century

Thursday Thought

"Dependence on God may be what is lacking in a society where consumerism and accumulation have become the root diseases of a world in which everything is not enough and nothing satisfies."


- Joan Chittister, from The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages

Thursday Thought

Walking the Lord's road

The Lord's new road is not a railroad to run people over, and it is not filled with closed up cars all rushing off to their own destinations. It is a place for walking together toward the common destination of dignity, balance, freedom, and a fair share for all. 
~ Stephen Hamilton Wright

Thursday Thought

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
 -- Thomas Merton

Thursday Thought

From Leadership Weekly's email from 11/15/11, written by Marshall Shelley:

What causes some young people to walk away from the faith after they graduate from high school? And, more important, what causes other young people to hang on to their faith during those post-high-school years?

A few years ago, I heard a Christian sociologist offer his assessment: "The most important factor is not whether the young person 'prayed to receive Christ' or was involved in a youth group or even went on a missions trip. The key factor seems to be how many meaningful relationships the young person has with Christian adults who are not his or her parents."

What do you think? Adults: how did caring Christian adults, what Vibrant Faith Ministries would call AAA Christians (available, affirming, authentic) help you keep the faith during your young adult years? For whom are you serving in that capacity now? If you need help - let me know!
Youth: how many caring Christian adults do you know at CtK? What would make it easier to facilitate those relationships?

Thursday Thought

Who is rich? He who rejoices in his portion. ~The Talmud

Thursday Thought

Gratitude is the fairest blosson which springs from the soul.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Thursday Thought

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.
Have you used one to say "thank you"?
-William Arthur Ward

Thursday Thought

"The church is only the church when it is there for others."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What do YOU think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation...

Thursday Thought Part 2

Hat tip to Matt H. for sending this video to the Rooted in Faith, Growing in Giving Leadership Team.
Go watch it. Please.


"Bread for me is a material problem.
Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual problem."
—Nikolai Berdyaev

What do you think of the video?

Thursday Thought

"Bread for me is a material problem.
Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual problem."

—Nikolai Berdyaev

What do YOU think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation!

Thursday Thought

"If a person gets his attitude toward money right, it will straighten out almost every other area in his life."
- Billly Graham

What do YOU think? Leave a comment below.

Thursday Thought

"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc. is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.

"If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them.”
—C.S. Lewis

What do YOU think? Leave a comment, below.

Making History?

I've been exchanging emails with a mentor and friend this week, who also happens to be our predecessor here at CtK, the Rev. Shelley Wickstrom. Pastor Shelley now works on the ELCA's Region One staff. And she wears quite a few hats. She spent time in June at the Campus Ministry Conference, part of July at the Women of the ELCA's Triennial Convention, and part of August in Orlando for the Churchwide Assembly (CWA). Here's what she had to say about the Assembly:

During CWA I was impressed by the endorsements given to the Genetics Statement. One genetics counselor gave a workshop on it to a national conference of genetics counselors who were amazed at its depth and breadth. That kind of peer review matters. There were also farmers who spoke in favor of it, plus geneticists. Participation in the Malaria Campaign will be one of those experiences that hopefully we'll be able to say to Marit some day that once upon a time there was a disease that killed a child every 45 seconds. Your church stopped that (with the help of philanthropists, other denominations, etc....)

I hope she's right - that Malaria will be history someday. And that we will know we have played a small part in making it so.

Not sure what all Pastor Shelley's talking about? Learn more about the Social Statement on Genetics, the ELCA Malaria Campaign, the Women of the ELCA, and Lutheran Campus Ministry!
See you in worship - don't forget to bring your school bag this Sunday!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

If you're not wearing green, don't panic - in my experience that's a relatively Irish thing to do (NOT wearing green, that is). The year I lived in Northern Ireland (granted, it was a Protestant part of the Province), St. Patrick's Day came and went without any of the fanfare we associate with it in the United States - it's a SAINT'S day, after all, which means you go to church if you're Catholic. And many Loyalists/Protestants would wear orange before they wear green, but the explanation for that can wait until another day (in the meantime, however, please continue to pray for lasting peace in Northern Ireland - friends of mine there are nervous about the growing violence and are afraid of a return to the Troubles).

It seems to me that Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in the US the way so many other holidays are - as an excuse to behave in ways one might not otherwise, to spend money that's not so necessary to spend, and to find kitschy outfits and decorations to somehow prove something. What's going on here?

Perhaps it's time to remember the man behind the day. To that end, this History Channel website has some interesting articles, about Patrick and about Ireland in general. Hope you find it interesting.

We would also do well to think about the faith that inspired Patrick. There's a hymn in our hymnal based on St. Patrick's breastplate, which always serves to remind me that God's really not so far away and that the here and now can be holy - filled with the presence of Christ. It's number 450 in the ELW. Here's the 4th verse:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

God bless you on this day and always!